Job No. 159711
- Job Title:
- AI Solutions Developer
- Employer:
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University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
- Location:
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Ann Arbor , MI
- Posting Date:
- 28-Sep-2026
- Description:
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Job Summary
The mission of the University of Michigan Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) is to catalyze, support, and safeguard U-M research. To that end, our team is constantly striving to foster new research, build partnerships, and provide support to our researchers to realize our vision of research to serve the world.
OVPR runs on systems that were never designed to talk to each other. Our small IT team supports more than thirty units, and much of what we build closes that gap: pulling identity, human resources, finance, space, and service data into one place, then replacing manual, spreadsheet driven work with software people actually want to use.
In this role you will design and build those applications. You will write the code, own the data structures behind it, and integrate against university services through the U-M API Gateway and central identity systems. You will also sit with the staff whose process you are automating and ask enough questions to understand it before you build anything. And you will use AI as an engineering tool rather than a talking point, because a growing share of what we ship is built with, or powered by, the university's generative AI platforms.
This is a small team with a wide surface. You will own work early, you will see it in production quickly, and the people using it are the ones supporting research across the university.
Responsibilities*
Application Development and Integration
Design, build, and maintain web applications and internal tools that consolidate data from across the university, including OVPR's Backstage portal and its custom plugins.
Develop and consume APIs, including university services reached through the U-M API Gateway such as Finance, Department, MCommunity, and TeamDynamix.
Integrate applications with central identity services including Okta OIDC and Shibboleth, and with unit systems of record such as CollectionSpace.
Deploy and support containerized applications on the U-M Container Service.
Troubleshoot and resolve defects across the full stack, from the interface through to the data layer.
Data Architecture and Management
Model, build, and query the relational data behind OVPR applications, keeping structures clear enough that a small team can maintain them.
Aggregate data across sources that frequently disagree, including identity claims, human resources records, financial shortcodes, space and equipment data, and group memberships.
Build reporting and dashboards that answer the questions OVPR units ask repeatedly.
Apply appropriate handling for institutional data based on its sensitivity classification.
Process Automation and Applied AI
Turn documented business processes into working automation, replacing manual and spreadsheet based workflows with supported applications.
Apply the university's generative AI platforms, including the U-M GPT Toolkit and ITS AI Workflows, to automate multi step work with human review built in.
Evaluate where AI genuinely improves an outcome and where a conventional solution is the better answer.
Identify automation opportunities while working alongside unit staff, and raise them rather than waiting to be asked.
Requirements and Collaboration
Work directly with OVPR unit staff to understand how a process actually runs, not only how it is documented, and translate that into a technical design.
Partner with ITS and other technical providers on shared services, integrations, and dependencies.
Explain technical tradeoffs clearly to people without a technical background, and bring them along on the decision.
Coordinate with the IT Business Consultant and Associate Director so that consultation, project delivery, and development stay aligned.
- Contact information:
- University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
- Ann Arbor, MI 48109
- United States
- Employer's Website:
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