Software Engineer 1

About NAES

At NAES, you’ll find engaging and challenging career opportunities in the power generation, renewable energy and industrial construction industry. At every level of the company, we share a common goal: To instill confidence in our clients through our steadfast commitment to safety, integrity and quality of work.

NAES is largest independent operator of power facilities in the industry, operating more than 190 power plants throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico and the UK that span all technologies and provide over 49 GW of capacity. With the strength of 4000 people, our growing family of companies now addresses the entire life cycle of power generation and other industrial plants.

Summary

The Software Engineer is responsible for the development and integration of AI-enabled applications that improve internal business workflows and enterprise productivity.  Build and refine LLM-powered solutions, RAG pipelines, document and knowledge retrieval workflows, and enterprise integrations, while making extensive use of modern AI coding tools to accelerate delivery, improve code quality, and support the scalable deployment of production-ready AI capabilities. 

Primary Duties

• Build, test, and maintain software components that support AI and automation initiatives
• Design and implement solutions involving RAG, document ingestion, chunking, embeddings, vector search, semantic retrieval, prompt orchestration, and enterprise knowledge grounding
• Contribute to backend services, APIs, orchestration layers, and data pipelines used in AI applications
• Make heavy use of AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot, or similar tools to improve development speed, quality, and productivity
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-documented code following engineering best practices
• Participate in code reviews, debugging, testing, and continuous improvement efforts
• Help support deployment, monitoring, and enhancement of AI-enabled applications across enterprise platforms
• Collaborate with senior engineers and cross-functional teams to translate requirements into working software

Working Relationships

Temporarily this position will report directly to the VP, IT until the Engineering Manager is hired.  The Software Engineer does not have supervisory responsibilities.

Compensation 

The initial annual compensation will range from $74,200 to $85,000 based on qualifications and experience.

Job Qualifications:

Education: Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, information systems, or related field from an accredited college or university recognized by the United States Department of Education or equivalent.  Relevant work experience may be substituted for education on a year-for-year basis. 

Years of Experience: One year of software engineering or application development experience.

Preferred Experience:

• Experience building AI applications such as copilots, knowledge assistants, semantic search tools, or document Q&A systems
• Experience with enterprise document processing, data integration, or grounding AI systems on internal knowledge sources
• Familiarity with agentic AI patters and best practices including tool use, multi-step reasoning, agent memory, human-in-the-loop design, and responsible handling of autonomous actions
• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines, containerized development (Docker), and production deployment workflows
• Experience with retrieval tuning, prompt iteration, and monitoring answer quality in RAG systems

 Licenses/Certification:

Software/Equipment Knowledge:

• Python, TypeScript, SQL, REST APIs, and JSON-based integrations
• AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot
• Microsoft Azure and cloud-based application development
• Familiarity with orchestration frameworks (LangChain, Semantic Kernel, LlamaIndex), vector databases, or model evaluation tooling (preferred)

Other Considerations:

• Strong foundational knowledge of AI/ML concepts and hands-on exposure to modern AI application patterns LLM integrations, prompt engineering, embeddings, vector databases and RAG; in any context (work, projects, or coursework)
• Good understanding of software engineering fundamentals, including APIs, databases, version control, testing, and debugging
• Strong problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills with a willingness to learn

Physical Requirements and Working Conditions

Normal working hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Extended hours may be required based on business needs.

This position requires working from the Issaquah office at least four days per week. Additional remote work flexibility may be considered based on business needs and at the discretion of the manager.

Fit for Duty

All employees will participate in the Fitness for Duty Program. This program includes a post-offer physical examination and drug screening and post-employment random drug screening. There are extensive smoking restrictions in and around the facility.

NAES Safe

Safety is a core value of NAES and as a condition of employment, all employees are expected to be mentally alert and work safely at all times.  Additionally, employees are required to adhere to all safety warnings and posted safety signs whenever on company property.  Furthermore, employees must follow all NAES safety rules and procedures.  Effectiveness in carrying out this responsibility is part of the evaluation of each employee’s performance.

NAES is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. It is the practice of NAES to seek employees of the highest quality and to select individuals on the basis of merit and competence, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, military status or affiliation protected under USERRA, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by applicable local, state and federal law.