AI Developer

About The Company

Kirkland & Ellis is a global law firm recognized for setting high standards of legal excellence. Its culture is grounded in teamwork, ingenuity, and continuous growth. More than 7,000 professionals, including over 4,000 attorneys, work across 24 offices worldwide to address sophisticated legal challenges and support global business, investment, and innovation. The firm’s dedicated professionals contribute to meaningful work and collaborate to deliver exceptional service to clients.

About The Role

Kirkland & Ellis is seeking an Innovation AI Developer to join its Innovation Engineering team. In this firm-wide role, you will develop secure, scalable artificial intelligence solutions that improve the quality, speed, and effectiveness of legal work and business operations. You will collaborate with attorneys, innovation leaders, engineers, and data scientists to translate complex challenges into practical products using large language models (LLMs), machine learning (ML), and advanced analytics.

Reporting to the Director of Innovation Engineering, you will contribute to building the firm’s Innovation Engineering program and guide solutions through the full development lifecycle, from experimentation and evaluation to deployment and monitoring. The standard schedule is 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., although hours may vary. Occasional travel may be required.

Responsibilities

• Partner with legal, business, and technical stakeholders to identify valuable use cases, clarify requirements, and define measurable outcomes for efficiency, quality, and risk reduction.
• Design and develop internal tools and workflows using AI models, vector databases, orchestration frameworks, and modern user-interface platforms.
• Build retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, AI agents, and applications for contract analysis, diligence review, document summarization, legal research, and related needs.
• Architect resilient solutions on Microsoft Azure and work with infrastructure and security teams on cloud, local, and hybrid deployments involving sensitive data.
• Develop evaluation frameworks to assess model accuracy, robustness, safety, business value, and suitability for specific use cases.
• Create internal libraries, documentation, and reusable solution patterns that support consistent, efficient development.
• Advise on prompt design, model selection, and evaluation approaches; support pilots, demonstrations, user training, and feedback collection.
• Assess emerging technologies, open-source libraries, vendor platforms, and third-party applications, contributing to technical diligence and technology decisions.
• Share knowledge about AI developments through presentations, training, internal resources, and collaboration with attorneys, business teams, colleagues, and clients.
• Coordinate technical workstreams and collaborate across Innovation, engineering, data science, legal, and business teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required, preferably in computer science or a related discipline.
• At least four years of experience in professional services, legal, or technical roles, with demonstrated success in collaborative environments. Law firm experience is preferred.
• Strong Python skills, proficiency with SQL, and experience working with databases, APIs, document repositories, and structured or unstructured data.
• Hands-on experience with technologies such as OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Hugging Face, LangFlow, LangChain, or comparable platforms.
• Experience building AI agents and RAG pipelines with vector databases, such as Pinecone, or knowledge graph-backed solutions.
• Ability to build secure, scalable solutions on Microsoft Azure; familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD. Azure AI Studio, Azure Cognitive Search, and Azure Cosmos DB experience is preferred.
• Experience developing LLM evaluation frameworks using tools such as Promptfoo, OpenAI Evals, or LangSmith, and building internal applications with Retool, Streamlit, or Gradio.
• Strong discovery, communication, and problem-solving skills, including the ability to define acceptance criteria, estimate ROI, explain technical concepts clearly, and exercise sound judgment with sensitive information.

Benefits

Kirkland & Ellis offers a competitive compensation package and flexible benefits designed to support employees at work and in their personal lives. Benefits include comprehensive healthcare, paid time off, retirement programs, personal support, and tailored learning and development opportunities. The firm’s goal is to help employees realize their potential and continue to grow professionally.

The listed base salary ranges are $176,000–$242,000 for Chicago and $176,000–$264,000 for New York. Actual compensation may vary according to geographic location and cost-of-living considerations.

Equal Opportunity

Kirkland & Ellis makes employment decisions without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, pregnancy or childbirth, personal appearance, family responsibilities, sexual orientation, gender identity, political affiliation, source of income, place of residence, national or ethnic origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military or veteran status, physical or mental disability, or any other status protected by applicable law. This commitment applies to recruiting, hiring, placement, training, promotion, compensation, evaluation, discipline, and termination.