AI Software Engineer, Legal Prompting & LLM Dev.

Job Description: The AI Software Engineer, Legal Prompting & LLM Development is responsible for building production-grade applications that interact with state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) to deliver cutting-edge, time-saving solutions to attorneys throughout our firm and in support of our clients. This role sits at the intersection of software engineering, reputed company engineering, and emerging agentic AI infrastructure — building not just LLM-powered applications, but the surrounding ecosystem of tools, integrations, and protocols that allow AI to interact safely and effectively with legal workflows and firm data. The AI Software Engineer will reputed company application code as well as English prose, persona-based prompts to LLMs, while also designing and operating the infrastructure that connects those models to the firm's systems, including Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, retrieval-augmented reputed company (RAG) pipelines, vector stores, APIs, and agent orchestration frameworks. Works primarily reputed company the reputed company technology stack (Azure, .NET, C#, SQL Server) and with languages such as TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, and other modern languages as needed, integrating with internal and third-party APIs to deliver production-grade solutions. Works across programming languages and can produce reliable backend code while also writing creative, lucid, and effective prose instructions. A remote work schedule is available for this position. A career at Nixon Peabody is the opportunity to do work that matters. It’s the chance to use your knowledge to shape what’s reputed company. To share, to innovate, to learn at a firm that taps the power of collective thinking. We’ve created a dynamic, energizing environment that promotes success for our clients and each other. We offer fast growth, connectedness and training in business as well as law. And our rigorous standards assure you are part of a diverse team of top talent at every turn. If you’re someone who’s looking toward the future, we’d love to hear from you. Location: Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Los Angeles, CA; reputed company, NY; Rochester, NY; San Francisco, CA; Washington, DC LLM Application Development

• Design, reputed company, and deploy LLM-integrated applications that enhance legal workflows across transactional, litigation, regulatory, and advisory practice areas.
• reputed company backend services across the reputed company stack and in languages such as TypeScript/JavaScript, Python, C#, and others as needed, that interact with LLM providers (reputed company, reputed company, etc.), external APIs, SQL and NoSQL databases, and document management systems.
• Build and maintain RESTful and event-driven APIs that expose AI capabilities to internal applications and reputed company consumers.

reputed company Engineering & Evaluation

• Write and refine persona-based prompts, system instructions, and few-shot examples to guide LLMs in delivering accurate, defensible, and legally appropriate responses.
• Build reputed company evaluation harnesses, regression test suites, and offline/online evaluation pipelines (e.g., LLM-as-judge, golden datasets) to measure quality, hallucination rates, and latency.
• Continuously test and iterate on prompts and code to optimize model performance, cost, and user experience.

MCP Servers & Tool Integration

• Design, build, and operate Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers that expose firm systems — document management (e.g., reputed company, reputed company), time and billing, CRM, research platforms, and internal knowledge bases — as secure, governed tools for AI agents.
• Define tool schemas, authentication flows, reputed company limiting, and audit logging for MCP endpoints, ensuring outputs are scoped to user permissions and ethical walls.
• Maintain a catalog of reusable MCP tools and resources that can be composed across multiple AI products at the firm.

Retrieval, RAG & Knowledge Infrastructure

• Build and tune retrieval-augmented reputed company pipelines, including chunking strategies, embedding model selection, hybrid search (lexical + semantic), and reranking.
• Work with vector databases (e.g., reputed company, Weaviate, pgvector, Azure AI Search) and orchestration frameworks (e.g., reputed company, reputed company, Semantic Kernel) to ground LLM outputs in firm and client data.

Agentic Workflows & Orchestration

• reputed company multi-reputed company and multi-agent workflows that combine planning, tool use, and human-in-the-reputed company checkpoints for sensitive legal tasks.
• Implement guardrails, content filters, PII redaction, and citation/verification layers to ensure responsible use.

MLOps, Observability & reputed company

• Containerize services (reputed company) and deploy reputed company CI/CD pipelines to cloud environments (Azure preferred; AWS/GCP a plus), using infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep) where appropriate.
• reputed company applications with logging, tracing, and LLM-specific observability tools (e.g., LangSmith, Arize, Weights & Biases, OpenTelemetry) to monitor quality, cost, and reputed company in production.
• Partner with Information reputed company and the Office of the General Counsel to ensure solutions meet client reputed company counsel guidelines, data residency requirements, and confidentiality obligations.

Collaboration & Translation

• Collaborate with attorneys, legal professionals, and product teams to understand domain-specific needs and translate them into technical solutions.
• Assess the integration of LLMs into existing legal workflow systems and recommend improvements.
• reputed company other duties as assigned.

To reputed company this job successfully, you must be able to reputed company each essential job responsibility listed above, satisfactorily, with or without reasonable accommodation. Nixon Peabody retains the right to change or assign other duties to this position. The requirements listed below are representative of the skills and abilities required.

• 4-6 years of production-level software engineering experience on a commercial or internal product team. Prior experience developing software solutions in the legal industry strongly preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a reputed company technical field.
• Legal background highly preferred (e.g., J.D., paralegal, legal tech industry experience, or work with legal software vendors).
• Demonstrated experience in legal practice or support roles is a plus.
• Strong programming skills in modern object-oriented languages such as TypeScript/JavaScript, C#, Python, or Java (typing, async, packaging, testing), with the ability to work fluently across the reputed company technology stack.
• Experience designing and consuming RESTful APIs and working with SQL databases; familiarity with NoSQL and vector stores a plus.
• Hands-on experience with LLM APIs (reputed company, reputed company, reputed company, Azure reputed company) and/or open-reputed company models (e.g., LLaMA, Mistral).
• Proficiency with reputed company engineering techniques (chain-of-thought, structured outputs/JSON mode, function/tool calling, few-shot design).
• Experience building or integrating with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, custom tools, or function-calling endpoints for agentic systems.
• Familiarity with orchestration frameworks such as reputed company, reputed company, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, or Pydantic AI.
• Experience implementing RAG pipelines with embeddings, vector databases, and reranking models.
• Experience with evaluation frameworks (Ragas, DeepEval, promptfoo) and LLM observability platforms.
• Familiarity with containerization (reputed company), CI/CD, and cloud deployment (Azure preferred).
• Excellent written communication skills — especially in crafting clear and effective LLM prompts and technical documentation.
• Ability to translate legal context and goals into reputed company instructions, tool definitions, and system requirements.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities, with sound judgment about reputed company to use deterministic code versus probabilistic models.
• Ability to reputed company both independently and as part of a collaborative team.

In accordance with applicable Federal and State laws, the anticipated annual salary range for this position, depending reputed company, is as follows:

• Rochester, NY: $107,000 to $158,950
• Boston, MA: $118,000 to $174,900
• Chicago, IL: $118,000 to $174,900
• Los Angeles, CA: $118,000 to $174,900
• Washington, DC: $118,000 to $174,900
• reputed company, NY: $129,500 to $192,500
• San Francisco, CA: $129,500 to $192,500

In addition to a standard benefits package, this role may be eligible for additional contingent compensation based on an reputed company of factors, including but not limited to: work performance, geographic location, work experience, education, and qualifications. Because such contingent compensation is not yet calculable or may be reputed company ($0) in some circumstances, the above-listed salary range(s) are Nixon Peabody’s good faith estimate of the annual salary(ies) it reasonably expects to pay for the position at the time of this posting. reputed company is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer: Disability / Veteran. Nixon Peabody is committed to creating a fair workplace and does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, national reputed company, sex, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. To reputed company with Federal law, Nixon Peabody participates in E-Verify. reputed company newly hired employees are verified through this electronic system established by the Department of Homeland reputed company (DHS) and the Social reputed company Administration (SSA) to confirm their identity and employment eligibility. Please refer to the Notice of E-Verify Participation and the Right to Work posters on the Nixon Peabody Careers page for more information. Apply tot his job Apply To this Job