AI Engineer

Job Location

We are hiring for this position in Salina, KS. About Us:

Pure Imagination Studios started in 2012 as a diversified entertainment company built by a team of creators who shared a true passion for storytelling. We thrive on imagination, and everything we do is set to bring a tangible experience to anything our clients, partners and even ourselves, are able to imagine. We believe that pure imagination should be the fuel to our reality. Pure Imagination Labs designs immersive, interactive experiences that make complex training and simulation intuitive, purposeful, and fun. Our projects blend real-time systems, tactile interfaces, and narrative framing to support education, decision-making, teamwork, and user engagement in high-stakes scenarios. We take the best of game design and apply it to real-world learning environments that demand more than just entertainment. The environments are dynamic, the challenges are varied, and the work is as rewarding as it is technically ambitious. Overview:

Pure Imagination Labs’ AI Engineer identifies and integrates generative AI tools into creative, technical, and operational workflows across projects. Prototypes and deploys AI-assisted solutions that enhance content creation, streamline internal processes, and support multiplayer immersive simulation delivery. This role will collaborate with cross-functional teams consisting of backend engineering, real-time content teams, and Unreal-based avatar team to build intelligent utilities, prompt systems, and automation pipelines using platforms like GPT, Stable Diffusion, and Whisper. Evaluates emerging tools, maintains prompt libraries and scripts, and supports internal adoption through documentation, training, and workflow design. Balances innovation with practical execution to ensure AI applications add measurable value without disrupting delivery. Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain the on-prem LLM stack: model selection, deployment, and the tradeoffs that get acceptable performance out of the available hardware (current spec includes RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell-class GPUs).
• Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams to implement practical AI solutions for real-time experiences, production tools, and support systems.
• Create and manage the retrieval system that connects the model to a custom domain corpus, and the strategies that keep the system honest when it doesn’t know.
• Oversee the Stand up and tune the local speech pipeline (ASR in, TTS out) for the latency and naturalness a live simulation need.
• Develop the integration surfaces between the AI and the rest of the product and support everything that talks to the AI to define what those conversations look like.
• Support ethical and responsible use of AI technologies, balancing innovation with practical and repetitional risks.
• Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams to establish how accuracy and hallucination control are measured and accepted on this product.
• Plan for concurrency: the system needs to serve many simultaneous participant interactions across the simulation.
• Assistance with defining how knowledge stays current in an air-gapped environment with establishing a partnership with operations
• Partner with leadership to define and evolve AI-related strategy, standards, and governance across projects.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Associate’s degree or equivalent from two-year college/technical school required.
• Bachelor’s degree from a four-year college or university is preferred or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Minimum 3 to 5 years of experience using automation, scripting, or machine learning tools to support creative, technical, or operational workflows.
• Minimum 1 to 2 years of active hands-on work with modern generative AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Whisper, ElevenLabs).
• Relevant profession certifications preferred.
• Deployed and managed at least one production on-prem or air-gapped LLM system. Cloud-only experience is not sufficient.
• Expertise with local LLM deployment: model selection, quantization, inference runtimes (llama.cpp, vLLM, TGI, or similar), and GPU resource management.
• Proficiency in Building RAG pipelines against custom corpora in production, demonstrates a strong working knowledge of chunking, retrieval evaluation, and prompt design.
• Successful track record of measuring hallucination on production systems, not just shipping systems that seem to work.

Additional Qualifications

• Expertise in Real-time interactive experiences, simulation systems, or game-engine-adjacent products.
• Experience working with Multi-tenant LLM architectures where the same engine serves multiple products or personas.
• Expertise in pragmatic about tool choice, selects the right tool for the job rather than the most interesting one.
• Working knowledge of local ASR and TTS toolchains and the latency tradeoffs in a speech pipeline.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to interact effectively with internal teams, external vendors, and other stakeholders.
• Ability to handle sensitive information with confidentiality and professionalism.

o Fully Remote: This position has been designated as fully remote, meaning that the position is expected to contribute from a non-PI Studios/PI Labs worksite, most commonly an employee’s residence.

o Required Travel: This candidate is required to travel up to 15% for specific project installations.

The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. This position is eligible for company sponsored benefits, including medical, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), medical leave, and a variety of other perks. A bonus and incentive plan may be provided as part of the compensation package, dependent on the level and position offered.

Learn more about the opportunities offered by Pure Imagination by visiting the Careers page of the company website.

Annual Salary: $120,000 (bonus eligible)

Pure Imagination Studios is an equal opportunity employer (EOE).

Salary

$120,000 annually Pure Imagination Studios is an equal opportunity employer (EOE).