Junior AI Integration Engineer

Ready to Lead AI Sprints, Build Smart Tools, and Put Automation Into Action from Day One?

ZURU is on a mission to disrupt industries, challenge the status quo, and catalyze change through radical innovation and advances in automation. This is in play in different pillars of the company: ZURU Toys are re-imagining what it means to play; ZURU Tech is shaping a better future by leading the next building revolution; and ZURU Edge is pioneering new-generation FMCG brands to better serve modern consumers. Founded in 2003 by EY Entrepreneur of the Year and World Entrepreneur Hall of Fame brothers Nick and Mat Mowbray, ZURU has quickly grown to a team of over 5,000 direct and indirect members across more than 30 international locations. One of the largest toy companies in the world, our globally recognized and award-winning brands include Bunch O Balloons, Mini Brands, XSHOT, Rainbocorns, and Smashers. Our global FMCG brands include MONDAY Haircare, Rascals, BONKERS, and Gumi Yum Surprise.

As a Junior AI Integration Engineer, you'll work hands-on with business teams across ZURU to diagnose friction, build AI-powered tools, and ship them into production. From knowledge bots and workflow automations to campaign reporting agents and data analysis agents, your work will directly impact how thousands of people across ZURU get their jobs done every day.This role sits at the centre of ZURU's AI transformation. You'll run focused sprints with business units, translate real workflows into working AI tools, and hand off validated prototypes to the engineering team for production. This is a hands-on, build-and-ship role with real ownership from week one.You'll work across business units spanning toys, consumer goods, tech and construction — in NZ, China, United States giving you visibility into shared problems and reusable patterns no single-team role would offer.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Lead one-week focused sprints with business teams: shadow workflows, identify high-value automations, build a working PoC, and hand it off

• Build AI-powered tools including knowledge bots, RAG systems, data analysis agents, campaign reporting tools, and custom web apps

• Connect AI tools to business data sources via semantic models that make it easier for AI agents to query our data, Databricks, and MCP connections

• Deploy and maintain infrastructure using Terraform, AWS, and modern CI/CD practices

• Design and build RAG systems across multiple business units, covering document ingestion, chunking, retrieval quality, and knowledge architecture

• Facilitate hands-on workshops to upskill teams from beginner to self-serving with AI

• Mentor team-level AI Champions and contribute to the shared skill library of Claude skills, templates, and how-to guides

Skills & Experience:

• Comfortable reading and writing code in Python and JavaScript or TypeScript
• Comfortable using AI coding tools such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or Claude Code
• Experience building AI workflows
• Strong understanding of modern LLM capabilities including agents, tool use, RAG, context engineering, and structured output
• Ability to deconstruct complex business workflows and re-engineer them for automation
• Strong communication skills, able to sit with business units across commercial, marketing, design, manufacturing, and finance, translate technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders, run workshops, and present to senior leadership
• Builder's mentality, focused on creating scalable, repeatable solutions rather than ad-hoc fixes
• Ability to take a problem from discovery through to working PoC

Bonus:

• Exposure to Terraform, AWS, or similar cloud environments
• Experience building data pipelines or working with semantic layers (dbt or similar)
• Exposure to vector databases, embeddings, or retrieval systems
• Hackathon, side project, or open-source contributions you can show us
• End-to-end project experience (academic, personal, or professional)

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