Senior Applied AI Engineer
About Turaco
Turaco is a fast growing company in Africa that provides simple, affordable and technology-enabled insurance products to underserved customers through partnerships with Africa\'s top brands. As Africa\'s leading insurtech, our vision is to insure the next 1 billion people and our mission is to act as a safety net, freeing people from the fear of financial shocks.
Description
Qualifications
Lives Turaco’s values – pushing boundaries, working with excellence, and a profound respect for the individual.
7+ years of professional software experience, with at least 3 years in applied AI/ML roles in production environments.
Startup or entrepreneurial experience is highly desirable – you are comfortable with ambiguity and moving fast.
Demonstrated strong programming skills in at least two of these languages: Java, Python, Go, or JavaScript; experience with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or scikit-learn.
Hands-on experience with LLMs and generative AI – prompt engineering, fine-tuning, Reinforcement Learning (RL), RAG architectures, or building LLM-powered applications.
Solid understanding of classical ML: supervised/unsupervised learning, model evaluation, and feature engineering.
Experience with data infrastructure – SQL/NoSQL databases, data pipelines, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
Familiarity with MLOps practices: experiment tracking, model versioning, CI/CD for ML, and monitoring in production.
Strong communication skills, able to translate complex AI concepts clearly for non-technical stakeholders.
Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field; strong academic track record preferred.
A creative, first-principles thinker who can identify where AI creates genuine value – and where it doesn’t.
Excellent team player with strong organizational and leadership skills.