AI Automation Engineer

Automation Analyst - 6-Month Contract-to-Hire - $75/hr W-2 - $95/hr W-2 / Conversion Salary $125,000–$160,000 - Preferred Grand Rapids, MI, 100% Remote OK
CBTS is searching for an AI Automation Analyst that both analyzes and builds. This is a hands-on position for someone who can sit with users, dig past the first answer to find the exceptions and workarounds that matter, and then personally ship the automation — using workflow orchestration, RPA, scripts, integrations, and AI-assisted coding tools.
CBTS has already invested in automated process discovery tooling and has a substantial existing portfolio of RPA automations in production; some are excellent, some are brittle, and some may need to be retired. This role helps inherit and improve that portfolio while also building new automations from the ground up.
Responsibilities:
Interview and observe the people doing the work — run discovery sessions, workshops, and side-by-side walkthroughs to surface exceptions, workarounds, and edge cases that discovery tooling alone won't reveal
Build the automations personally: workflow orchestration, RPA, scripts, integrations, and AI-assisted steps; escalate only the genuinely hard problems to engineering
Turn process discovery output into a prioritized, quantified backlog — current cost, cost to fix, and expected return
Help own the existing RPA portfolio: understand what each automation does and for whom, fix what's brittle, document what's undocumented, and retire what no longer earns its keep
Write clear requirements: user stories, acceptance criteria, exception paths, and failure modes
Own reliability for everything shipped, including monitoring, error handling, and runbooks
Manage the change: bring affected teams along, train them, and ensure new processes stick
Measure results against what was promised and report outcomes honestly
Requirements:
Demonstrated builder, not just documenter — can point to automations, tools, scripts, or workflows that exist and are actively used
Serious hands-on experience with AI coding tools (e.g., Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) to write and debug real, working code — not just draft communications
Strong analyst fundamentals: able to run a discovery session, elicit requirements from non-technical stakeholders, and turn a vague complaint into a defined, quantified problem
Technical fluency with REST APIs, JSON, webhooks, SQL, and scripting in Python or JavaScript; able to read API documentation and get data moving independently
Track record of automating personal or team workflows — scripts, macros, or automations that saved meaningful time, repeatedly
Genuine curiosity about how work actually gets done, beyond what's documented in a process doc
Willingness to maintain and improve existing automations, not only build new ones
Strong interpersonal and change-management skills — able to build trust with business stakeholders and gain buy-in before changing how their work is done
Sound judgment on whether a process should be automated, eliminated, or renegotiated before any automation work begins
Qualifications:
Business process modeling experience (BPMN or equivalent) at a level of detail people actually use
Hands-on experience with workflow automation or iPaaS platforms
RPA experience, especially inheriting or auditing an existing bot portfolio; n8n experience a plus
Experience building with LLM APIs — structured extraction, document processing, tool-using agents, or evaluation harnesses
Familiarity with task or process mining tools and translating their output into action
Formal continuous improvement background (Lean, Six Sigma, value stream mapping)
Browser or UI automation experience (Playwright, Puppeteer, Selenium)
Data experience beyond SQL, such as dbt, data warehouse modeling, or BI tooling
CBTS provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a protected veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws.

Work arrangement
Yes