AI Engineer SME

AnaVation is seeking an AI Engineer SME to lead research, design, development, and execution of specialized operational and analytic cyber AI capabilities supporting real-world missions. This onsite role in Chantilly, VA requires an active Top Secret (TS) clearance with eligibility to obtain SCI access via a CI polygraph.

Responsibilities

• Build scalable, production-ready AI/ML/GenAI models, pipelines, and microservices.
• Develop training, evaluation, and inference pipelines in Python using PyTorch, TensorFlow, or scikit-learn.
• Deploy and manage models using MLOps, CI/CD, containerization, and monitoring frameworks.
• Implement vector databases, embeddings, LLM applications, agentic AI, and tool calling workflows.
• Optimize models for accuracy, latency, cost, and scalability across distributed environments.
• Support AI governance, documentation, ethical compliance, and secure posture alignment.
• Provide technical mentorship and drive cross-team engineering standardization.

Requirements

• Active Top Secret (TS) clearance with eligibility for SCI access and ability to obtain a Counterintelligence (CI) polygraph.
• Bachelor’s degree or master’s degree with 10 years of experience specializing in AI/ML engineering.
• Hands-on experience deploying production AI/GenAI and LLM systems, including embeddings, multi-model and multimodal orchestration, reasoning, memory, and tool execution.
• Proficiency with PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including practical MLOps experience using MLflow, Azure ML, or Vertex AI.
• Experience implementing NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, and temporal, spatial, geographic, or quantitative AI capabilities, including named entity recognition, contextual entity extraction, and entity resolution.
• Experience developing multi-step retrieval and structured output workflows with source citations, provenance, and traceable analytic results.
• Expertise in data architecture integrating vector, graph, and relational databases, including automated ETL pipeline development, scheduling, optimization, complex parsing, and schema-aligned ingestion and normalization of structured and unstructured data.
• Experience implementing data-layer Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) and end-to-end data lineage tracking.
• Experience supporting air-gapped, hybrid, and on-premises environments, including locally hosted GPU servers, hyperconverged infrastructure, container orchestration, distributed systems, and multitenant Cross-Domain Solutions (CDS).
• Proficiency in full-stack application development and integration using TypeScript, React, Python, FastAPI, LanceDB, Lance Graph, PostgreSQL, Temporal.io, Docker, and Kubernetes to connect user interfaces, backend services, middleware, retrieval systems, databases, and AI/GenAI services.
• Experience delivering and maintaining solutions in agile engineering environments.
• Ability to work on-site in Chantilly, VA.

Required Technologies

• AI/ML/GenAI, Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, MLOps, CI/CD
• Vector databases, embeddings, LLM applications, agentic AI, tool calling workflows
• AWS, Azure, GCP; MLflow, Azure ML, Vertex AI
• NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, named entity recognition, entity resolution
• ETL, Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC), data lineage tracking
• Air-gapped, on-premises, GPU servers, hyperconverged infrastructure, container orchestration, distributed systems, Cross-Domain Solutions (CDS)
• TypeScript, React, FastAPI, LanceDB, Lance Graph, PostgreSQL, Temporal.io, Docker, Kubernetes

Benefits

• Generous cost sharing for medical insurance for the employee and dependents
• 100% company paid dental insurance for employees and dependents
• 100% company paid long-term and short-term disability insurance
• 100% company paid vision insurance for employees and dependents
• 401k plan with generous match and 100% immediate vesting
• Competitive Pay
• Generous paid leave and holiday package
• Tuition and training reimbursement
• Life and AD&D Insurance

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in federal, defense, or highly regulated environments.
• Knowledge of ethical AI, governance frameworks, and secure development practices.
• Skills in large-scale optimization, GPU acceleration, or distributed training.
• Experience building APIs, microservices, and automated ML workflows.