AI Platform Engineer

AI Platform Engineer – Cloud and Infrastructure
Client: International Organization
Location: Rome, Italy - Remote
Daily rate: Based on Experience and budget availability
Duration: Initial 3 months
Contract Type: Consultancy, Freelancing
Technical Context
Within the ICT function of an Agency of the United Nations, AI work spans the design, development, and deployment of a broad range of AI products, features, and analytics capabilities. This includes custom-built standalone AI platforms, the integration of AI capabilities into existing corporate systems, and the adoption of ready-made AI tools and services for broader organizational use. The work also includes model benchmarking and evaluation. Together, these capabilities support a wide range of business and operational use cases across the organization.
Delivering AI systems and features depends on a broad set of shared platform and engineering capabilities. These include cloud services, identity and access management, container platforms, CI/CD pipelines, model serving, API-based integration, infrastructure automation, monitoring, and access to both cloud-hosted and internally deployed AI models. Together, these capabilities provide the foundation needed to build, test, deploy, and operate AI solutions reliably.
As the use of AI expands, these shared capabilities become increasingly important for scaling delivery across different use cases. Their continued evolution, standardization, and automation will be key to enabling new AI capabilities, simplifying how AI solutions are developed and operated, and strengthening the overall reliability, security, and consistency of the AI technology landscape.
The role will require close collaboration across AI, software, cloud, and platform engineering disciplines. It therefore requires a strong understanding of how these areas come together to enable the delivery and operation of enterprise AI solutions.
Duties and Responsibilities
Under the supervision of the ICT Senior Specialist, the incumbent will provide the technical expertise to address the following tasks:
Contribute to the design, implementation, and maintenance of shared infrastructure and platform capabilities supporting the deployment and operation of AI models, services, and applications.
Collaborate with technical colleagues to facilitate the implementation of infrastructure, platform and deployment workstreams supporting AI applications, APIs and other enterprise platforms
Configure and maintain API management and gateway services, including Azure API Management (APIM), to support secure and scalable access to AI models and services across on-premises, cloud and external provider environments
Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation for AI platform components and model deployments, in accordance with established enterprise standards.
Develop Terraform-based infrastructure-as-code deployments to provision, configure and maintain AI platform components and related cloud services.
Support the integration of enterprise AI services with applications, APIs and other enterprise systems, providing implementation support as required
Produce and maintain appropriate technical documentation, deployment procedures and operational guidance for AI platform components and services
Any other support duties as required
Professional Requirements
At least four years of professional work experience
Hands-on experience supporting the deployment and operation of scalable, reliable, and secure applications, AI services, and enterprise platforms across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments
Hands-on experience working across AI, Terraform (IaC), software development, cloud, and platform engineering teams, with the ability to translate business and technical requirements into practical implementation solutions
Solid understanding of the software development lifecycle, modern software engineering practices, and enterprise-grade software deployment and operations
Problem Solver – able to critically analyse problems, explore different solutions, consider various options, and effectively complete tasks
Team Worker – able to consult and deal effectively with all levels of technical and non-technical stakeholders and partners in the organization, establishing working relations of openness and trust in a multicultural setting
Proactive Planner – able to prioritize and organize work for effective resolutions of problems whilst staying ahead of potential issues
Effective Communicator – ability to communicate effectively to understand and explain technical and non-technical matters to stakeholders and partners in the organization
Qualification and Experience
University degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related discipline
Technical Requirements
Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure, including the deployment, configuration, integration, and operation of cloud-based applications, services, and platform components
Strong experience with API management and gateway technologies, preferably Azure API Management (APIM), including configuration, routing, load balancing, failover, security, and integration of backend services.
Strong experience with containerized architectures and deployments using Docker and Kubernetes, including the deployment, configuration and scaling of services in Kubernetes environments
Experience with CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, version control, DevSecOps and modern software engineering practices
Experience with infrastructure-as-code and automated provisioning technologies, such as Terraform, Bicep or equivalent tools
Strong understanding of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning models, services and architectures, including Generative AI, Large Language Models and other AI model types, with experience in their deployment, integration and operationalization
Experience with AI model serving and inference architectures, including the deployment of model-serving workloads in Kubernetes environments and familiarity with technologies such as vLLM, NVIDIA NIM or equivalent frameworks
Good working knowledge of Python, with experience in automation, API integration and AI-related workloads
Good knowledge of API design, networking, authentication and authorization, and integration of enterprise services.
Languages
Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English are essential. Knowledge of other languages is welcome, especially Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Arabic.

Work arrangement
Yes