Forward Deployed AI Engineer

Join a forward-deployed team building agentic AI systems for U.S. Government partners in McLean, VA (on-site 5 days per week). You will work closely with federal agency stakeholders to translate mission requirements into production-ready technical systems that support efforts to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse. This role includes local travel across Washington, D.C. sites, including the Pentagon and federal agency offices.

Compensation: $150,000 – $200,000 per year plus competitive equity. A SECRET clearance is required.

What you will do

• Build and deploy agentic AI systems, including RAG pipelines, multi-agent frameworks, and tool-calling agents
• Embed directly with federal agency partners to understand mission needs and convert them into working technical solutions
• Analyze public, proprietary, and restricted government datasets to identify potentially fraudulent contractors and spending activity
• Create data pipelines and analytical workflows that help prevent future improper or fraudulent spending
• Own projects end-to-end, from requirements gathering through architecture, development, deployment, and iteration
• Integrate large language models with databases, APIs, analytical tools, and government systems
• Communicate system capabilities by presenting technical concepts to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders
• Travel locally to government facilities throughout Washington, D.C., including the Pentagon and federal agency offices

What you bring

• Approximately 4–6 years of relevant experience across software engineering, applied AI, machine learning, or AI research
• Strong Python engineering skills with demonstrated end-to-end delivery experience
• Hands-on experience building and deploying agentic AI or large language model systems into production
• Experience with RAG pipelines, multi-agent frameworks, tool-calling agents, or related LLM orchestration technologies
• Experience building data pipelines and working with large, complex, or fragmented datasets
• A blend of software engineering and AI/ML experience, rather than a purely traditional software engineering background
• Experience working directly with customers, government stakeholders, operators, or other external partners
• Experience at a government-facing, defense technology, or national security technology company is strongly preferred
• Startup experience or a clear record of independently owning and delivering technical projects is preferred
• Experience with distributed systems, machine learning infrastructure, or reinforcement learning is a plus
• A Bachelor’s degree in computer science, machine learning, engineering, or a related technical field is preferred (technical depth is more important than the specific degree)
• Willingness to work on-site five days per week in McLean, Virginia
• Willingness to travel locally to federal agency and government sites throughout Washington, D.C.
• Must have a SECRET clearance

Technologies

Python, RAG pipelines, multi-agent frameworks, tool-calling agents, large language models, LLM orchestration technologies

Location

Washington, DC (McLean, VA – on-site 5 days/week)

Education: Bachelor’s degree in computer science, machine learning, engineering, or a related technical field.