Practice Systems & Applied AI: Legal AI Systems Engineer

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP is a premier law firm with market-leading practices, a global perspective, and strong New York roots. Our clients look to us to bring a distinctively high degree of quality, intensity, and creativity to resolve legal challenges effectively and cost-efficiently. We believe in hiring talented and dedicated individuals as members of our administrative and professional community. We draw on the strength of our culture and structure to deliver the best of our firm to our lawyers and clients through true collaboration.

We are seeking a Legal AI Systems Engineer to serve under the direction of the Head of Practice Systems & Applied AI in our Practice Systems & Applied AI Team within the Technology Department. This individual will serve as a senior technical contributor responsible for researching, designing, developing, integrating, and supporting artificial intelligence capabilities that advance the Firm's legal practices and operations.

The Legal AI Systems Engineer will lead hands-on AI research and development, translate practice and business needs into secure technical solutions, and help move promising use cases from experimentation through production. This role will work closely with Practice Systems & Applied AI, Information Security, Data Strategy & Security attorneys, Enterprise Applications, Infrastructure, Knowledge Management, lawyers, and other stakeholders to ensure that AI solutions meet the Firm's requirements for security, privacy, reliability, usability, and performance.

RESPONSIBILITIES INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

• Collaborate with the Head of Practice Systems & Applied AI to execute the Firm's AI strategy through research, prototyping, development, integration, testing, and deployment of AI-enabled solutions.

• Lead technical research and development involving large language models, generative AI, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems, document intelligence, and related technologies.

• Design, build, and maintain AI applications, services, workflows, integrations, and prototypes that support legal practices and Firm operations.

• Evaluate emerging AI models, frameworks, platforms, development tools, and infrastructure against defined practice, security, performance, and operational requirements.

• Develop on-premises, private, or hybrid AI capabilities where security, privacy, data residency, integration, or performance requirements warrant.

• Build and support Model Context Protocol servers, clients, tools, and related integrations that securely connect approved AI applications with internal databases, document repositories, knowledge systems, and enterprise platforms.

• Design and configure agent harnesses, agentic workflows, and governance frameworks that ensure responsible deployment and oversight of autonomous AI capabilities.

• Design and support secure APIs, tunnels, gateways, service connections, and middleware integrations between AI platforms and Firm systems.

• Assist Information Security with technical assessments of new AI products, features, models, connectors, APIs, and data flows, including architecture, access, retention, and security considerations.

• Support testing for prompt injection, data leakage, insecure tool use, access-control failures, model behavior, and other AI-specific security and reliability risks.

• Develop evaluation frameworks, test datasets, and quality-assurance processes to measure the accuracy, safety, performance, latency, usability, and cost of AI solutions.

• Partner with Enterprise Applications, Infrastructure, Information Security, Knowledge Management, Data Strategy & Security attorneys, and other teams to move AI use cases from experimentation through production.

• Integrate AI capabilities into practice systems, including document management, knowledge management, search, collaboration, workflow, and content management platforms.

• Develop reusable components, connectors, templates, services, and technical patterns that accelerate the delivery of future AI use cases.

• Work directly with Associates, Counsel, Partners, and professional staff to understand legal workflows, define technical requirements, and develop practice-specific AI solutions.

• Maintain technical documentation, source-control practices, testing standards, deployment procedures, monitoring processes, and support materials for internally developed AI solutions.

• Stay abreast of advances in AI engineering, model development, AI security, legal technology, open-source frameworks, integration standards, and enterprise deployment practices.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, data science, information systems, or a related technical field required; equivalent relevant experience may be considered.

• Minimum of five years working in software engineering, application development, systems integration, data engineering, machine learning engineering, or a related technical role.

• Demonstrated ability to design, develop, test, deploy, and support production applications or enterprise technology solutions.

• Hands-on background developing AI-enabled applications using large language models, generative AI platforms, machine learning services, or related technologies.

• Familiarity with retrieval-augmented generation, semantic search, embeddings, vector databases, document-processing pipelines, agentic workflows, or similar AI architectures.

• Proven capability integrating applications with APIs, internal databases, document repositories, identity systems, enterprise platforms, and other data sources.

• Working knowledge of cloud, private-cloud, on-premises, or hybrid application architectures.

• Experience collaborating with Information Security, data privacy, infrastructure, enterprise architecture, or governance teams to assess and implement new technologies.

• Proven track record of leading technical projects from research and prototyping through production deployment and ongoing support.

• Exposure to legal technology, professional services systems, Model Context Protocol integrations, locally hosted models, or document-intensive business processes preferred.

REQUIRED SKILLS:

• Strong software development skills in one or more languages commonly used for AI and application development, such as Python.

• Strong understanding of large language models, prompt design, tool use, retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector search, model evaluation, and AI application architecture.

• Experience working with APIs, software development kits, webhooks, middleware, databases, authentication protocols, secure tunnels, and systems-integration patterns.

• Understanding of secure software-development practices, including access controls, secrets management, encryption, logging, monitoring, auditability, and protection of confidential information.

• Familiarity with source control, containers, automated testing, deployment pipelines, application monitoring, and modern development and release practices.

• Ability to translate legal and business workflows into clear technical requirements, practical solution designs, and scalable implementation approaches.

• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, organizational, and communication skills, including the ability to explain technical risks and tradeoffs to lawyers, leadership, and non-technical stakeholders.

TO APPLY:

A resume is required to apply for this position. Please tell us your salary requirements and where you saw this position posted. Send required materials to:

Human Resources
jferrigno@debevoise.com
212.909.7388