Overview

The Applied AI Prompt Engineer designs, optimizes, and maintains the prompts, agent behaviors, context structures, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) workflows that power DeVry’s enterprise AI ecosystem—including Copilot, ChatGPT, agentic workflows, and internal knowledge tools.

This is a hybrid role blending prompt engineering, operational AI lifecycle management, and cross-functional collaboration. You will rapidly prototype prompt variations, run evaluations, maintain knowledge pipelines, and ensure outputs remain accurate, compliant, and aligned with DeVry’s tone and policies.

The ideal candidate is fast, curious, experimental, and skilled at translating human-to-human support scenarios into reliable AI-driven interactions.

Key Responsibilities

Prompt Design & Optimization

• Design and maintain high-quality prompts, and agent instructions for enterprise AI platforms.

• Rapidly prototype and iterate prompt variants using structured experimentation, evaluation metrics, and A/B testing.

• Build evaluation rubrics, structured test cases, and prompt datasets to measure accuracy, tone, consistency, and policy alignment.

• Adapt prompts for higher-education use cases (e.g., advising, HR, faculty support, IT, student services) while maintaining institutional tone and compliance.

RAG & Knowledge Integration

• Curate and manage document ingestion, embeddings, and knowledge base updates to ensure relevant, current, and context-aware responses.

• (Optional) Maintain and optimize Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines supporting policy retrieval, HRIS lookups, Salesforce case context, and SharePoint knowledge sources.

• (Optional) Define structured output formats (e.g., JSON) when required for automated workflows.

AI Operations (Lightweight AIOps)

• Support the lifecycle of prompts and agents, including change control, versioning, and regression testing.

• Monitor usage, output quality, knowledge retrieval performance, and drift to detect issues early.

• Participate in lightweight incident response and safe rollback processes when AI behaviors degrade or become noncompliant.

• Maintain operational runbooks and documentation to ensure long-term maintainability and continuity.

Governance, Safety & Compliance

• Implement guardrails and safety rules to minimize hallucinations, unsafe content, and policy violations.

• Identify and mitigate issues related to bias, tone, safety, and factual accuracy.

• Ensure AI usage adheres to institutional policies, compliance requirements, and risk standards.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Serve as a translator between business stakeholders and technical teams, converting real-world workflows into effective prompt strategies.

• Partner with HR, Student Services, Academics, IT, Product, and Security teams to design AI-supported processes with measurable impact.

• Communicate findings clearly and concisely to non-technical audiences.

Continuous Improvement

• Stay up to date on prompting techniques, LLM capabilities, and platform enhancements.

• Drive incremental improvements in agent reliability, workflow automation, and operational consistency.

• Contribute to standardized prompt frameworks, reusable templates, and prompt libraries.

Qualifications

Required

• 2+ years in applied AI, workflow automation, analytics, or product roles involving LLM-based systems.

• Hands-on experience designing and iterating prompts for tools such as Copilot, ChatGPT, or equivalent.

• Experience with RAG pipelines, knowledge retrieval, or document ingestion workflows.

• Ability to work rapidly and iteratively in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.

• Strong communication skills and ability to translate stakeholder needs into prompt/agent behavior.

• Experience using structured evaluation methods (rubrics, test cases, metrics) to assess AI output quality.

Preferred

• Familiarity with Python or low-code scripting for testing or API interactions.

• Experience with Microsoft Copilot Studio, Salesforce GPT, or enterprise AI platforms.

• Experience contributing to operational documentation or change control processes.

• Experience in higher education, EdTech, HR tech, or service operations.

• Basic familiarity with higher-ed workflows (student services, HR, academics, IT support).

• Understanding of safety, compliance, and risk considerations in regulated environments.

Position is bonus eligible