Innovation Engineer

We are seeking an Innovation Engineer who is passionate about exploring emerging technologies and translating them into practical solutions that deliver meaningful business value.

This role focuses on rapid experimentation, applied problem solving, and technological discovery. The successful candidate will evaluate modern technologies — currently with a strong emphasis on AI and LLM capabilities — and apply them to improve product features, engineering workflows, and internal processes.

While AI is a key focus today, this role is intentionally technology-agnostic. The Innovation Engineer is expected to stay ahead of evolving technology trends and apply whichever tools best solve the problem at hand.

Although experimentation and rapid prototyping are central to this role, the ideal candidate will also have a strong foundation as a software engineer, with hands-on experience building and supporting production software.

Strong hands-on experience applying modern AI technologies such as LLM APIs, RAG, prompt engineering and evaluation, AI workflow orchestration, agent-based frameworks, and AI-assisted automation.

Comfortable leveraging modern AI platforms such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini to rapidly prototype solutions. While AI is the current focus, the role also requires the ability to evaluate and apply other emerging technologies when they provide meaningful advantages.

Comfortable operating as an autonomous builder capable of handling the full lifecycle of a project—from frontend UI for demos to backend logic and basic cloud deployment — without requiring support from existing sprint teams.

The goal is to demonstrate working concepts quickly during experimentation while maintaining awareness of how successful ideas may later integrate with existing architecture and production systems.

Ability to identify Minimum Viable Value. During the R&D phase, the priority is solving real business problems and validating ideas quickly rather than optimizing for perfect architecture or long-term maintainability.

Actively follows emerging technologies and industry trends, identifying meaningful signals while filtering out short-lived hype.

Evaluate how emerging technologies may impact product capabilities, engineering workflows, or operational processes, and periodically share insights with engineering leadership to inform technical direction.

Demonstrated ability to rapidly experiment with emerging technologies and translate ideas into working prototypes, supported by a portfolio of side projects, experiments, or technical initiatives.

Ability to recognize when technically interesting approaches do not effectively solve the underlying business problem, and pivot quickly toward more practical solutions.

Ability to explain complex systems to both technical and non-technical audiences — connecting ideas to customer value and operational impact for business stakeholders, while discussing latency, cost, scalability, and data considerations with engineers.

Examples of projects the Innovation Engineer may explore include:

• Prototyping AI-powered features that enhance existing product capabilities.
• Building proof-of-concept tools that automate internal engineering or operational workflows.
• Experimenting with AI-assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity.

Deliver a steady cadence of meaningful proof-of-concept implementations exploring how emerging technologies can address specific product or operational challenges.

Evaluate emerging technologies in controlled environments to determine whether they are suitable for eventual integration into the core product.

Identify opportunities that leverage modern technologies (particularly AI) to amplify what we can already do, enabling faster delivery, improved efficiency, and new product possibilities.

Share prototypes, findings, and techniques with the engineering team to encourage experimentation and adoption of useful technologies, helping catalyze innovation across the organization.

Provide periodic insight to engineering leadership on emerging technologies and their implications for product capabilities, engineering workflows, and long-term strategy.

Benefits:

• Extended health, dental and vision care
• 20 days vacation
• Flexible work options (office, hybrid or remote)
• Stock options

Why Envisio?

Envisio’s award-winning software aligns staff with departmental action plans and key performance measures, enabling customers to establish trust with their stakeholders. We get to see big plans and even bigger dreams for improving the overall effectiveness and trustworthiness of public agencies.

We’re passionate about building deep, personalized relationships with our customers to help them build safe and thriving communities. We’ve got great software, happy customers, and a passionate team. We’re leaders in our market and share a strong sense of purpose with our clients. We’d love for you to join us!