Associate Applied AI Engineer

Groundswell is hiring an Associate Applied AI Engineer for an onsite role in Virginia, combining hands-on engineering with client-facing delivery. In this position, you will translate an incompletely defined business need into production-quality software that integrates applied AI capabilities, collaborating with stakeholders from requirements through evaluation and demonstration.

What you’ll do

• Turn a defined technical approach into production-quality functionality.
• Join requirements discussions with business stakeholders to understand the workflow, business need, and desired outcome.
• Bring ideas and alternative solution approaches, including opportunities to simplify the system or reduce the AI component where appropriate.
• Build complete AI-enabled applications, covering prompt and retrieval design, structured outputs, tool and function definitions, API integration, data handling, error handling, and user-facing functionality.
• Create evaluation sets from real data, measure results against them, and report findings accurately, including results that do not support the chosen approach.
• Investigate failures by locating where a capability produced incorrect results, characterize the root cause, and implement fixes.
• Support client demos and proofs of concept to show how AI can be applied to customer business challenges.
• Seek feedback, ask thoughtful questions, and continuously expand understanding of client needs and AI best practices.
• Instrument and document work, including logging, traceability, intended behavior, known limitations, validation methods, and failure handling.
• Shift between client delivery, internal product work, rapid proofs of concept, and internal enablement based on project needs.
• Surface blockers, unclear requirements, and results that are not trusted early rather than working around them.
• Contribute reusable patterns, prompts, and evaluation harnesses back to the team.

What you’ll need

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field, or equivalent demonstrated ability.
• 1+ years of professional software development experience.
• Hands-on experience building applications that integrate large language models, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, structured extraction, and/or tool use (experience may come from professional work, internships, academic research, or significant personal/open-source projects).
• Experience contributing to applications that integrate AI capabilities with APIs, data handling, and user-facing functionality.
• Familiarity with a general-purpose language such as Python, TypeScript, or SQL, including integrating APIs and working with imperfect data.
• Ability to lead a requirements conversation with a non-technical stakeholder, identify the underlying need, and return with a proposed approach.
• Willingness to question designs, including designs provided by others, and advocate for alternatives.
• Ability to work through ambiguous requirements with guidance, ask thoughtful questions, and drive assigned work to completion.
• Clear written and verbal communication, since this role produces documentation and materials clients read.
• Candor about the limits of your knowledge and willingness to ask rather than assume.
• U.S. Citizenship required, with ability to obtain and maintain any federal government background investigation, suitability determination, or security clearance required by client engagements.

Technologies you may work with

• Python
• TypeScript
• SQL
• AWS Bedrock
• Azure OpenAI
• Appian
• OutSystems
• Mendix
• Microsoft Power Platform
• ServiceNow
• Salesforce

Compensation

USD 88,177 - 171,637 per year.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
• Flexible Spending Account
• 4% 401K Match (immediate vesting)
• Paid Time Off
• Tuition reimbursement, certification programs, and professional development
• Flexible work schedule
• On-site gym and childcare option

Preferred qualifications

• Prior client-facing work in consulting, solutions engineering, professional services, or implementation
• Experience with a low-code or application platform such as Appian, OutSystems, Mendix, Microsoft Power Platform, ServiceNow, or Salesforce
• Public sector or regulated-industry delivery experience
• Experience with cloud AI services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure OpenAI
• Familiarity with LLM evaluation or observability tooling
• Personal or open source projects involving language models, agents, retrieval, or evaluation

Additional notes

Groundswell does not accept unsolicited resumes through or from search firms or staffing agencies. All unsolicited resumes will be considered the property of Groundswell, and Groundswell will not be obligated to pay a placement fee.

Accessibility and employee rights resources

• EO 13496 Notification of Employee Rights under NLRA
• Know your rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal

If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request a reasonable accommodation as part of the employment selection process, contact [email protected] or 703-639-1777.