New opportunity

Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Solutions Engineer II

CONA Services · Charlotte, United States

About this role

The AI / ML Solutions Engineer II independently designs, builds, and leads advanced AI, machine learning, automation, and analytical solutions for complex business needs. The role owns end-to-end technical execution and uses predictive insights, automation, and emerging technologies to solve higher-value problems.

Responsibilities

  • Define technical architectures, implementation approaches, and lifecycle plans for advanced solutions.
  • Prepare, test, validate, and optimize data, models, logic, and solution components for quality, reliability, and business value.
  • Partner with Data Solutions Leads, business stakeholders, and technical teams to develop practical solution strategies.
  • Monitor, maintain, enhance, and document deployed AI, ML, and automation solutions for continued value and reuse.

Requirements

  • Bachelor’s degree and 7 or more years of experience.
  • Deep experience in AI, machine learning, advanced analytics, automation, or intelligent solution development; strong proficiency in Python, SQL, and tools for model development, orchestration, and deployment.
  • Experience leading end-to-end predictive, optimization, classification, recommendation, or LLM-based solutions. Ability to evaluate technical tradeoffs, manage solution lifecycles, and develop new approaches when established methods are insufficient.
  • Strong understanding of data preparation, model evaluation, performance tuning, monitoring, and operationalization, plus the ability to translate complex business needs into scalable solutions and collaborate with stakeholders.

Preferred

A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related technical field.

The posting lists Charlotte, North Carolina, as the location and describes benefits including a 401(k) match, health coverage, an employee stock purchase plan, training, and mentorship.

For full details about this role, click “Apply on company site” to view the employer’s original posting.

Skills for this role

Artificial IntelligenceMachine LearningPythonSQLAdvanced AnalyticsAutomationPredictive ModelingOptimizationClassificationRecommendation SystemsLarge Language ModelsData PreparationModel EvaluationPerformance TuningModel MonitoringModel DeploymentTechnical ArchitectureCommunicationCollaboration

Your skill match

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Get interview-ready for this role

A focused preparation guide, built around this job’s responsibilities and requirements.

✦ AI-generated guide
Preparation suggestions, not the employer’s actual interview questions. Always check the original posting for current requirements.
01

Understand the role

What matters most

  • Own complex solutions end to end

    The role independently leads major AI, ML, automation, and analytical efforts, from architecture and implementation approach through lifecycle planning. Prepare to explain how you make and defend technical decisions across that full span.

  • Deliver reliable, valuable outcomes

    The posting emphasizes preparing, testing, validating, and optimizing data, models, logic, and other components for quality, reliability, and business value. Prepare examples that connect evaluation choices to the problem being solved.

  • Turn business needs into practical designs

    The engineer partners with Data Solutions Leads, business stakeholders, and technical teams to shape scalable solution strategies. Prepare to describe how you clarify a complex need and reach an actionable technical approach.

  • Sustain deployed solutions

    Monitoring, maintenance, enhancement, and documentation are explicit duties, intended to support ongoing value and reuse. Be ready to discuss operational decisions after deployment, not just initial model development.

Likely challenges to think through

  • Choosing an approach without overengineering

    A likely challenge is balancing advanced methods against practical implementation and business value; the posting calls for evaluating trade-offs and developing new patterns when established ones fall short. Prepare a decision narrative comparing viable approaches and explaining when added complexity was justified.

  • Reconciling model performance with operational reliability

    A likely difficulty is that improvements during development may add deployment or monitoring burden. Prepare to explain how you would weigh evaluation results, performance tuning, maintainability, and lifecycle needs together.

  • Aligning stakeholders while retaining technical ownership

    The role combines independent technical leadership with collaboration across business and technical teams. Prepare an example of translating differing needs into a clear solution scope, including how you communicated trade-offs and resolved ambiguity.

03

Practice your answers

Technical practice

How would you turn a complex business need into a measurable AI or ML solution?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Explain how you would clarify the decision to support, available data, constraints, and what business value would look like. Distinguish a measurable outcome from a model metric before choosing an approach.

How would you design the architecture and lifecycle plan for an advanced solution?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Walk through data flow, model or logic components, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance. Explain trade-offs between implementation complexity, scalability, reliability, and reuse.

How would you use Python and SQL to prepare and validate data?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Describe checks for joins, missing values, duplicates, leakage, and changes in data over time. Explain how you would make transformations testable and repeatable.

How would you choose and evaluate an approach to a predictive, classification, optimization, recommendation, or LLM-based problem?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Compare approaches relevant to the problem rather than assuming one technique fits all five. Discuss baselines, suitable evaluation measures, validation design, and the consequences of different errors.

What would you do if a model performed well in development but fell short of the business goal?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Separate data quality, evaluation design, model behavior, and operational constraints as possible causes. Explain how you would test changes and decide whether further tuning is worth the effort.

How would you test and optimize an automation solution's logic?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Describe tests for expected behavior, edge cases, and failure handling alongside measures of business value. Explain when simpler, more maintainable logic would be preferable to added complexity.

How would you move a model from development into a dependable deployed solution?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Cover repeatable orchestration, component testing, deployment checks, and a plan for maintaining the solution. Discuss what evidence you would want before treating it as operationally reliable.

How would you investigate declining performance in a deployed AI or ML solution?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Compare current inputs, outputs, data quality, and evaluation measures with prior behavior to narrow down the cause. Explain how monitoring findings would guide a fix, retraining, or a change to the solution.

When would you create a new technical approach instead of using an established one?

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Identify the limitation of the established method and compare alternatives against quality, reliability, cost, and maintainability. Describe how you would validate a new pattern before broader use.

Behavioural practice

Tell me about a complex solution you led from design through ongoing operation.

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Use a real situation, the decisions and actions you owned, and the result. Clarify how you handled lifecycle planning rather than focusing only on the initial build.

Describe a time you worked with business stakeholders and technical teams to define a practical solution.

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Set out the situation, how you clarified differing needs and translated them into a technical approach, and the result. Be specific about your contribution to the collaboration.

Tell me about a consequential technical trade-off you had to communicate.

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Explain the situation, the alternatives you assessed, how you communicated their implications, and the result. Include what evidence informed your recommendation.

Describe a time a deployed solution needed significant troubleshooting or improvement.

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Give the situation, your diagnostic and corrective actions, and the result. Explain how you checked whether the change restored reliability or value.

Tell me about a time an established technical approach was insufficient.

What to coverPreparation suggestion: Describe the situation, what you changed or developed, and the result. Explain how you validated the approach and documented it for potential reuse.

02

Sharpen your knowledge

Topics to prepare

  • Architecture and lifecycle tradeoffs

    Posting: The role defines architectures, implementation approaches, and lifecycle plans independently. Suggested exercise: For a hypothetical complex business need, compare two solution designs on scalability, reliability, maintenance, and business value; explain your choice and lifecycle plan.

  • Choosing an advanced solution approach

    Posting: Experience leading predictive, optimization, classification, recommendation, or LLM-based solutions is requested. Suggested exercise: Take a hypothetical problem and explain which of these approaches fits, what data it needs, and when a simpler approach would be preferable.

  • Evaluation and performance tuning

    Posting: The role tests, validates, and optimizes data, models, logic, and solution components. Suggested exercise: Define quality measures for a hypothetical model, then explain how you would diagnose weak results and decide whether a change improved business value.

  • Operationalization and ongoing value

    Posting: Deployed solutions must be monitored, maintained, enhanced, and documented for sustainability and reuse. Suggested exercise: Outline what you would monitor after deployment, how you would investigate deterioration, and when you would revise the solution.

Skills to revise

  • Prepare data with Python and SQL

    Posting: Strong proficiency in Python and SQL and an understanding of data preparation are requested. Suggested exercise: Write SQL to assemble a hypothetical analysis dataset, then use Python to check missing values, duplicates, and inconsistent fields; explain each correction.

  • Test and tune a solution

    Posting: The role prepares, tests, validates, and optimizes models and solution components. Suggested exercise: Build a small predictive or classification example, compare it with a simple baseline, inspect errors, and document one justified tuning decision.

  • Plan deployment and monitoring

    Posting: Model development, orchestration, deployment, and monitoring are named. Suggested exercise: Sketch the steps from prepared data to a deployed solution, including validation checks, monitoring signals, and a maintenance response. The posting does not name a specific platform.

  • Translate stakeholder needs

    Posting: The engineer partners with Data Solutions Leads, business stakeholders, and technical teams to shape scalable solutions. Suggested exercise: Turn a hypothetical stakeholder request into a problem statement, measurable success criteria, technical options, and questions needing clarification.

04

Your preparation checklist

  • Map the role to your evidence

    Prepare a one-page reference to projects or experience you can discuss against the posting’s requirements: independent solution leadership, Python, SQL, model development, orchestration, deployment, and stakeholder collaboration. Note the stated bachelor’s degree and 7-or-more-years minimum without assuming how an employer will evaluate your background.

  • Build an end-to-end project walkthrough

    Choose a relevant predictive, optimization, classification, recommendation, or LLM-based solution you can discuss. Prepare a concise account of the business need, your decisions, architecture, implementation, tradeoffs, outcome, and what you would improve.

  • Prepare a technical design exercise

    As interview practice, sketch an approach to a hypothetical complex business need; the posting does not identify a specific project. Show how you would clarify the goal, assess data, choose an AI/ML or automation approach, and plan implementation and lifecycle ownership.

  • Assemble a quality and operations example

    Prepare evidence you can explain for data preparation, testing, validation, model evaluation, performance tuning, deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and documentation. Distinguish work you personally owned from team contributions.

  • Practice explaining a difficult tradeoff

    Prepare one example of comparing technical approaches for scalability, reliability, and business value. Explain how you made the decision, including any new approach you developed when established methods were insufficient.

  • Draft questions for the employer

    Ask how Data Solutions Leads, business stakeholders, and technical teams shape solution strategy; how deployed solutions are monitored and maintained; and what outcomes define value for this role.

AI-generated from the job information · Prepared Oct 1, 2026 (UTC)Useful preparation, not a guarantee of eligibility or an offer.

Availability last checked: Nov 4, 2026. Status can change after a check; confirm on the employer’s website. Report an issue · Our checking policy

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