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# Principal AI Engineer & Data Analyst

- **Company:** Concepts Inc.
- **Location:** Mundelein, IL, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Big Data, Information Engineering, Extract Transform Load (ETL), Python (Programming Language), Named Entity Recognition, Software Deployment, SQL Databases, Data Logging, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Large Language Models, Apache Spark, Information Technology, Apache Flink, Software Version Control
- **Published:** October 29, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.thejobnetwork.com/job/70949e0d-2e3b-49a1-ae6e-033221765ae6/principal-ai-engineer-data-analyst

## About the Role

* Ph.D., Master's, or Bachelor's in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Recent Ph.D. graduates and postdocs with strong applied AI/ML or speech/NLP research are strongly encouraged to apply.
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 * 5+ years of relevant experience in data engineering or applied AI/ML; equivalent Ph.D./postdoctoral research will be considered in place of industry tenure.
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 * Hands-on experience building real-time voice/speech AI (ASR/STT, speaker/role detection, keyword or entity spotting) - the most important technical qualification for this role - plus LLMs/SLMs, RAG, and production deployment with model versioning and monitoring.
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 * Proficient in Python with strong engineering practices (testing, logging, version control); experience with ETL/ELT orchestration, SQL, and big-data frameworks (Spark, Flink) on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
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 * Fast learner and clear communicator, able to explain complex technical work to technical and non-technical audiences, and eager to grow into public speaking and industry engagement.
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## Description

Shape Safer Skies with Artificial Intelligence! Concepts Beyond is seeking a hands-on AI / Data Engineer & Analyst to serve as our AI technical lead for aviation safety and air traffic management programs. A major focus is real-time voice processing - transcribing and extracting meaning from pilot-controller radio communications - alongside anomaly detection, aircraft conflict/collision risk prediction, and predictive safety analytics. This is a high-ownership, individual-contributor role: you will personally build, train, and deploy the models and pipelines that drive real decisions in the National Airspace System. We welcome recent Ph.D. graduates, postdocs, government or military technologists, and academic engineers - sharp, fast-learning technologists ready to grow into a highly visible, public-facing leadership role., * Build and fine-tune real-time ASR for pilot-controller radio communications using modern architectures (Whisper-class, Conformer/FastConformer, streaming RNN-T/CTC), adapted to noisy radio channels, call-sign phraseology, and diverse accents.
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 * Implement call-sign/command spotting and Named-Entity Recognition (NER) with contextual biasing against surveillance data (e.g., ADS-B); develop speaker-role/turn detection, voice activity detection, and read-back error detection.
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 * Deploy low-latency streaming inference for live ATC operations, evaluated on call-sign and command accuracy, not just overall word error rate.
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