AI Engineer (All Levels)

National Steel and Shipbuilding Com is hiring an AI Engineer to help deliver production-grade AI solutions inside Azure Government (GCCH) environments. This onsite role in San Diego focuses on building, testing, and operationalizing LLM and RAG systems, developing agentic workflows, and integrating AI agents securely with enterprise data and software.

What you’ll do

• Support testing and evaluation of LLM models and variants, including Azure OpenAI and other approved models, with an emphasis on performance and quality.
• Assist with RAG benchmarking including latency, relevance, accuracy, and cost; help optimize extraction engines, embeddings, and prompt strategies.
• Help build and configure MCP servers or similar integrations to securely connect AI agents to enterprise systems.
• Contribute to agentic AI workflows using tool-using, multi-step approaches, with platforms such as N8N, Azure Foundry, and Copilot Studio.
• Design and implement simple, modular AI microservices and APIs that can be reused across projects.
• Work with BI and DevOps teams to adopt AI and ML capabilities and move proofs of concept toward production.
• Assist with RBAC, secrets and key management via Key Vault, and data protection for AI workloads.
• Support monitoring, incident response, and documentation for AI workloads operating in Azure Gov environments.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent education/experience.
• Minimum 1–2 years experience with LLMs, RAG, or AI solution development.
• Foundational understanding of Azure or other cloud platforms; Azure Gov exposure is a plus.
• Interest or basic experience in prompt engineering, RAG architectures, and agentic AI workflows.
• Exposure to RBAC, Key Vault (secrets/key management), and data protection concepts.
• Strong organizational and communication skills (verbal and written).
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, evolving environment and respond with urgency to IT situations.
• May include other responsibilities and duties as assigned to support organizational security goals and initiatives.

Core technologies

• Azure Government (GCCH)
• Azure OpenAI
• MCP servers
• N8N
• Azure Foundry
• Copilot Studio
• RBAC
• Key Vault

Compensation and schedule

• Salary range: $90,300 - $159,900 (yearly)
• Pay scale: This pay range is a reasonable estimate for the role.
• Shift: 1st
• Job posting end date: Until Filled

Benefits

• Medical & dental insurance coverage
• 401(k) retirement savings plan
• Flexible spending accounts/HSAs
• Life and disability insurance
• Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO)
• Wellness coaching
• Onsite health services

Location and clearance

• Location: San Diego, CA (onsite)
• Security clearance: No Clearance

Physical demands

• Work is generally performed in office conditions with good lighting.
• Specific vision abilities required: close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.
• Regularly required to sit, use hands and fingers, handle or feel objects or controls, and to talk and hear.
• Must be physically able to walk to all yard locations.
• May occasionally be exposed to working outdoors with moderate noise level.