AI Platform Engineer-1 (Charleston, SC, Columbia, SC, Winter Haven, FL, & McKinney, TX)

The SouthState story is one of steady growth, deep community roots, and an unwavering commitment to helping our customers move forward. Since our beginnings in the 1930s to becoming a trusted financial partner across the South and beyond - we are known for combining personal relationships with forward-thinking solutions.

We are committed to helping our team members find their success while maintaining the integrity of our values: building trust, fostering lasting relationships and pursuing excellence. At SouthState, individual contributions are recognized, potential is cultivated and team members are inspired to achieve their greater purpose. Your future begins here!

Summary

The AI Platform Engineer designs, builds, and operates the bank’s Microsoft Power Platform and Copilot Studio ecosystem, enabling secure and scalable AI-driven business solutions across the enterprise. This role delivers production-ready Copilot agents, custom Power Platform connectors, MCP servers, Dataverse data models, and reusable agent tools that extend Microsoft 365 Copilot to bank workflows. Through disciplined Power Platform ALM, GitHub-native delivery, and responsible AI practices, the engineer accelerates AI adoption while reducing risk and operational cost.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Design, build, and deploy Microsoft Copilot Studio agents—including topics, knowledge sources, generative orchestration, authentication, and content moderation—that automate enterprise workflows across the bank

• Develop and maintain custom Power Platform connectors and MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers that securely expose internal banking systems and APIs to Copilot Studio agents and Power Platform makers

• Architect and govern Dataverse solutions—tables, relationships, security roles, business rules, plug-ins, and elastic tables—serving as the system of record for Copilot Studio agents and Power Apps

• Build agent tools, plug-ins, and reusable components in C# and .NET 10 to extend Copilot Studio with custom business logic, API integrations, and AI orchestration patterns (tool calling, RAG, declarative agents)

• Operate Power Platform Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) at scale—managed environments, solution packaging, the ALM Accelerator, Power Platform CLI (pac), and pipelines integrated with GitHub Actions

• Implement responsible AI governance—DLP policies, environment strategy, agent telemetry, evaluation harnesses, content safety, and grounding—ensuring compliance with bank security and regulatory standards

• Partner with software, data, and AI engineers to integrate Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, and Azure AI Search into Power Platform and Copilot Studio solutions, including knowledge ingestion and retrieval pipelines

• Mentor pro-code and citizen developers on Copilot Studio patterns, Power Platform ALM, secure coding, and AI engineering best practices; champion compliance with change management and SDLC standards

• It is the responsibility of this role to take ownership of all tasks and challenges that they encounter in the operation of their assigned position.  Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 

Qualifications

Education Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; or 5+ years of equivalent experience

Minimum Experience

• 5+ years building enterprise solutions on Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Dataverse), including 2+ years on Microsoft Copilot Studio or comparable conversational AI / agent platforms

Licenses & Certifications

• Microsoft Certified: Power Platform Developer Associate, Power Platform Solution Architect Expert, Azure AI Engineer Associate, or Microsoft 365 Certified: Copilot Studio (one or more preferred)

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• Microsoft Copilot Studio: agent design, topics, generative orchestration, knowledge sources, plug-ins, connectors, authentication, environment promotion, telemetry, content moderation, and evaluation

• Power Platform Connectors: custom connector authoring (OpenAPI definitions), policy templates, OAuth/OIDC, certified vs custom publishing, and connector lifecycle management

• Model Context Protocol (MCP): designing, building, and hosting MCP servers that expose tools, resources, and prompts to Copilot Studio and other AI clients; transport, auth, and tool discovery patterns

• Dataverse design: solution-aware tables, relationships, role-based security, business rules, plug-ins, virtual tables, elastic tables, and integration with external systems

• Agent tooling and patterns: custom plug-ins, declarative agents, tool calling, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering, and agent evaluation harnesses

• Power Platform ALM at scale: managed environments, solutions, ALM Accelerator, Power Platform CLI (pac), pipelines, and tenant-wide DLP and governance

• C# and modern .NET (.NET 10 / C# 13, ASP.NET Core, Minimal APIs, Azure Functions) — preferred for building connectors, MCP servers, Dataverse plug-ins, and agent tools

• Microsoft Azure breadth supporting AI workloads: Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, Azure Functions, API Management, Key Vault, Microsoft Entra ID, and Application Insights

• GitHub platform: Actions (reusable and matrix workflows, OIDC federation), Advanced Security, Dependabot, GitHub Copilot, and environment policies for Power Platform pipelines

• Responsible AI: prompt and agent evaluation, content safety, grounding, hallucination mitigation, and Microsoft Responsible AI Standard

• Security, compliance, and observability: secrets management, zero-trust networking, data classification, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Application Insights, and Power Platform admin center analytics

Physical Demands and Work Environment

Physical Demands

• Ability to communicate in person, on the phone, and through electronic channels

• Ability to use a computer on a frequent basis, including typing and sustained attention to a monitor

• Ability to sit, walk, and/or stand for extended periods of time

• Ability to bend and reach

Work Environment

• Office: This position reports to a physical Company location, and the setting will be a typical office environment.

• Remote or hybrid: For remote or hybrid positions, a secure and distraction-free setting is required, with a reliable internet connection (cable or fiber preferred, mobile hotspots not acceptable).  Hybrid positions will report to a physical Company location, as directed by the manager, and that setting will be a typical office environment.

Work Location: 520 Gervais Street Columbia, South Carolina 29201

Equal Opportunity Employer, including disabled/veterans.