AI-Native Integration Engineer (Richmond)

The Role We operate production integration and automation systems across multiple client environments, and we need an engineer who can think rigorously about integration design and treats AI as core infrastructure, not a side experiment. This isn't a greenfield build. The systems exist and serve real clients. You'll own their reliability, performance, and continuous improvement, and you'll use AI tooling extensively to do it. We expect you to be fluent with modern AI development tools, using them daily to ship faster, review more critically, and operate at a scale that wouldn't be possible otherwise. If your reaction to AI tooling is "interesting, but I still prefer to write everything by hand," this role isn't for you. If your reaction is "here's how I've already changed my workflow and what I'd build next," keep reading. What You'll Do
- Use AI tooling as a primary leverage point across development, code review, troubleshooting, and operations
- Own the reliability and performance of integration systems across client environments
- Translate client requirements into clean integration designs, including data models, field mappings, sync logic, error handling, and edge cases
- Build and maintain internal AI-assisted workflows that compound team output over time
- Monitor, troubleshoot, and improve data flows between CRM and external platforms
- Define and enforce standards for AI-assisted implementation quality, including what good looks like, where humans must stay in the loop, and where automation can run unattended
- Review implementation quality with a critical eye for correctness, security, and reliability, including output produced with AI assistance
- Design, document, and maintain clean APIs consumed by internal and external systems
- Build and maintain deployment pipelines, monitoring, logging, and alerting so issues surface before clients notice them
- Own cost observability across cloud, AI, and automation spend, flagging trends and driving efficiency
- Manage the underlying cloud infrastructure (currently AWS Lambda) to keep it reliable, secure, and cost-efficient
- Coordinate developers and technical workstreams across multiple client engagements What We're Looking For You've built and maintained data integrations before. You understand what production reliability actually requires, and you can hold the business analyst conversation as well as the engineering one, sitting with a client to map out how their systems should talk to each other, then turning that into a design that actually works in production. You've already integrated AI tooling deeply into how you work, not because it's trendy, but because you've measured the difference it makes. You take ownership. When issues arise, you drive them to resolution and improve the system to reduce recurrence. When something could be better, you say so. Specifically
- Strong BA-style integration design skills. You can scope a sync between two systems, identify the edge cases, define the failure modes, and document it in a way both developers and clients can follow
- Deep understanding of API design, versioning, authentication patterns, rate limiting, and documentation
- Demonstrated, daily use of AI-assisted development tools in production workflows. You can talk specifically about what you've built, what you've automated, and where you've drawn the line
- Strong experience with data integrations and middleware patterns
- Comfort with cloud platforms (we use AWS), CI/CD tooling, and observability platforms
- Experience managing operational costs across cloud, AI, and automation platforms
- Solid quality review habits, especially around AI-generated output
- Ability to coordinate developers and manage technical workstreams Nice to Have
- Experience in a consulting or agency environment
- CRM platform knowledge (HubSpot, Salesforce, or similar)
- Built and shipped your own AI tools or workflows. Personal projects count
- Background in cloud security and infrastructure hardening Why Kongo Small team that punches well above its weight. We've made AI tooling a core part of how we deliver, not a footnote in a marketing deck. You'll have real ownership, real leverage, and you'll be in a position to shape how a fast-moving services business actually uses AI to operate. Apply on Kit Job: kitjobau.com/job/3qk1nb