AI Implementation Engineer, Customer

We're looking for an Applied AI Engineer to join our Professional Services team in Christchurch. This is a role that's equal parts delivery and invention.

You'll work hands-on with experienced consultants to deliver customer implementations and bespoke services, while simultaneously building the AI tools and agents that make that work faster, more consistent, and higher quality. This is a deliberately experimental role: you learn the work by doing it, spot where the friction is, and build things that fix it.

It's not a research role. It's not a purely technical one either. It sits right in the middle, where implementation knowledge meets engineering instinct, and the measure of success is tools that are live, used, and making a real difference to how Phocas delivers.

What you'll be doing

• Contributing to customer implementations and bespoke services working alongside experienced Professional Services Consultants
• Hands-on delivery is both a core responsibility and your best source of insight into where tooling can help.
• Building AI tools and agents that improve implementation speed, consistency, and quality - you will be building things that reach production and get adopted by the team.
• Identifying recurring friction and manual effort in implementation workflows and targeting them with automation.
• Running structured experiments with new AI approaches, and producing honest read-outs of what worked and what didn't.
• Supporting selected Customer Success projects where the same skills add value, such as agents that improve customer engagement, as a secondary focus alongside core delivery.
• Documenting everything so tools can be maintained and owned by the team.

What good looks like

• Implementations delivered to a high standard, with growing independence over time.
• At least one AI tool live in production with a measurable effect on delivery efficiency or quality, and more in progress.
• A repeatable pattern for spotting friction, building a fix, shipping it, and handing it over.
• Experiments run with clear read-outs that shape where we invest next.
• Tools that don't depend on you to operate.

What you'll bring

This is an early career role. We're looking for the right instincts and a genuine desire to learn. You're someone who:

• Builds things. You have a portfolio of working software, through study, personal projects, or internships, and you're comfortable with APIs, modern frameworks, and figuring things out.
• Is energised by AI, not just interested in it. You want to apply it to real problems, not theorise about it.
• Thrives in ambiguity. You treat failed experiments as information and don't need a perfect brief to get started.
• Thinks about outcomes. Before you build something, you ask whether it will actually be used and whether it will make things better.
• Communicates clearly. You can explain technical work in plain English to consultants and customers alike.
• Wants to learn. You'll be paired with experienced implementers and technical specialists, so you can lean in, ask good questions, and absorb fast.

This is a unique opportunity to join a professional services environment in a product company, build real things with real impact, and help define what AI-assisted delivery looks like at Phocas. If you want to build things that matter and learn by doing, we'd love to hear from you!

Please note: due to current immigration restrictions, we can only consider applicants based in NZ with citizenship, residency, or a current work visa. 

Benefits

• Generous remuneration package including competitive salary, Southern Cross and other benefits
• Fantastic opportunities for growth and development
• Work with & learn from some of the best tech talent in Christchurch
• Central location with plenty of parking for cars/bikes/scooters
• The usual range of snacks and beverages to keep you going