{"id":1289498,"url":"https://alion.io/job/portage-ai-builder-forward-deployed-engineer","title":"AI Builder / Forward Deployed Engineer","company":{"id":1894346,"name":"Portage","domain":"portageinvest.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/portageinvest","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":true,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":10,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"junior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Toronto, Canada"],"countries":["CA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":56000,"max_usd":136000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":13},"experience_years_min":2,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-04-27T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-04-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-22T08:41:05Z","board_verified":false,"closed_at":null,"days_open":180,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":180},"description":"Sagard Overview:\nSagard is a multi-strategy alternative asset management firm active in venture capital, private equity, private credit and real estate. Sagard also engages in private wealth management through Sagard Wealth.\nFounded in 2016 and guided by the core values of entrepreneurship, innovation, collaboration, rigour and authenticity, Sagard has experienced outstanding growth. Today, the firm has more than US$45 billion under management, 190 portfolio companies and 540 professionals.\nSagard is well positioned to continue to grow substantially, organically and inorganically, pursuing its vision of becoming one of the best-performing investment management firms.\nHeadquartered in Canada, Sagard currently has offices in Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East.\nMore at https://www.sagard.com\nPosition Overview:\nSagard is on a journey to become an AI-first organization. We believe artificial intelligence will reshape the workplace by automating repetitive tasks and enabling teams to focus on higher-value, strategic work.\nThe AI Builder / Forward Deployed Engineer will work closely with business teams across investment, finance, compliance and operations to identify high-value opportunities and build practical AI-enabled solutions. As part of a small and agile AI and Data team, the role combines technical development, experimentation and cross-functional collaboration to rapidly prototype, deploy and scale solutions that improve how work is done across the firm.\nThis is fundamentally a full-stack engineering role. The majority of the work involves building the data pipelines, system integrations, and foundational infrastructure that make AI solutions possible -- not just the AI layer itself. Strong engineering fundamentals matter as much as AI fluency here.\nCompensation range:CAD$90,000 to CAD$130,000\nResponsibilities:\nPartner with business units across investment, finance, compliance and operations to understand operational problems, scope technical solutions, and rapidly prototype and iterate based on real-world feedback.\n\nDesign and build data pipelines that move, transform, and prepare data from internal systems for use in AI and analytics workflows.\n\nOwn end-to-end integrations between internal platforms and third-party APIs, including authentication, error handling, and ongoing maintenance.\n\nContribute to foundational infrastructure decisions -- data storage, service architecture, deployment patterns -- as the firm's data and AI platform matures.\n\nBuild and deploy production-ready AI applications, including RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and LLM integrations, with a pragmatic eye toward what actually works at scale.\n\nEnsure solutions meet production standards for security, access controls, responsible AI usage, and ongoing maintainability.\n\nQualifications:\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.\n\n2-5 years of experience in software engineering roles, with demonstrated ownership of production systems end-to-end.\n\nSolid full-stack engineering fundamentals -- backend services, relational and document databases, REST and webhook integrations, async patterns, and cloud deployment.\n\nHands-on experience building and maintaining data pipelines and system integrations in production environments, not just application-layer prototypes.\n\nPractical experience with LLM-based systems in production -- including RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and LLM integrations -- and sound judgment on when AI adds value over conventional approaches.\n\nCurious, self-directed, and biased toward action -- able to work directly with non-technical stakeholders, move fast in ambiguous situations, and drive problems to resolution without heavy oversight.\n\nPreferred: experience in financial services or alternative asset management, familiarity with structured financial data and compliance constraints.\n\nSagard is an equal opportunity employer, which values diversity in the workplace. We are therefore happy to accommodate any individual.\nIf you require accommodation in order to participate in the hiring process, please contact the People & Culture team to make your needs known in advance.\nSagard may use automated tools, including artificial intelligence, to support certain stages of the recruitment and selection process.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4350,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":2,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Venture Capital","Investment Holding Companies"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-26T07:32:30Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":4,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.15,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":180,"expected_fill_days":24,"reasons":["conf:45","stale_co","win:tail","crowd:junior"],"computed_at":"2026-10-24T06:02:35Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/portage-ai-builder-forward-deployed-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/portage-ai-builder-forward-deployed-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-24T19:36:50Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":28736,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-25T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1894346},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1894346"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fportage-ai-builder-forward-deployed-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fportage-ai-builder-forward-deployed-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fportage-ai-builder-forward-deployed-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/portage-ai-builder-forward-deployed-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fportage-ai-builder-forward-deployed-engineer"}]}