Principal AI Engineer

About C3 Technology Advisors

C3 Technology Advisors helps organizations make smarter technology buying decisions. As a technology advisory firm, we guide clients through the evaluation, procurement, implementation, and lifecycle management of technology solutions. Our culture is built around five core values: (1) Deep Caring for the Success of Others, (2) Ingenuity & Action, (3) Curiosity, (4) Confidence, and (5) Extreme Ownership.

About this Role

This is a first-of-its-kind role for us: part strategist, part builder, part translator, and part change leader. This position will help turn a set of promising ideas into practical tools, repeatable workflows, and measurable business outcomes across Sales, Engineering, Operations, Marketing, and Finance. We do not need someone who only writes strategy decks or experiments with prompts in isolation; we need a hands-on contributor who can identify where AI creates real value, build or guide early solutions, choose the right partners, and help our team adopt new ways of working with confidence.

What you will do

• Validate our internal AI strategy and suggest tweaks.
• Identify the high-value use cases within C3 with Sales, Engineering, Ops, Marketing and Finance.
• Prioritize the use cases, put an understandable roadmap in place, assist in budgeting
• Choose and roll out the right tools. Evaluate platforms, run pilots, make build-versus-buy recommendations to leadership
• Own architecture and technical standards.
• Build where needed. Prototype integrations and lightweight tools yourself when that is the fastest path to value.
• Drive adoption within C3. Train teams, build playbooks and prompt libraries, and meet skeptics where they are.
• Measure what matters, then report progress to leadership.
• Keep it safe. Practical policies for privacy, security, and acceptable use, so the company moves fast without creating risk.
• Own the relationships with external AI partner(s). It’ll be impossible to do the entirety of the AI job within the walls of C3. Dole out to partners what doesn’t make sense for C3 itself to take on.

Qualifications

• 7 - 10+ years in AI, data, product, or a technical role
• 2+ years with real experience deploying AI in a working environment.
• Proficiency with the latest tools, Microsoft-centric programs, programming languages, , etc.
• A strong grasp of modern AI, including LLMs, assistants, automation, and retrieval, plus judgment about where each does and does not help.
• A track record of driving adoption
• Excellent communication. You can win over a skeptical salesperson and a cautious VP of Ops in the same afternoon.
• The ability to operate at both altitudes: shape a roadmap in the morning, build a prototype in the afternoon.
• Awareness of the practical risks around privacy, security, and accuracy, and how to manage them without slowing everyone down.
• Although the job is remote, travelling to West Michigan several times a year is needed.
• 4 year degree is preferred, but is not a requirement

Nice to have

• Experience introducing AI at a small or growing company
• Experience in telecommunications or tech consulting.
• Hubspot experience

What success looks like

• First 90 days: a clear read on where AI can help, a prioritized shortlist, one or two visible wins, and sensible usage and data policies in place.
• First year: measurable adoption across multiple teams, demonstrable impact on time saved or output quality, and a company noticeably more AI-capable with the guardrails to keep improving.

Location

• Within 1 hour of Grand Rapids is preferred, within the Midwest is acceptable