Senior Applied AI Engineer

At Groundswell, you will turn unclear business needs into AI systems that work end-to-end in real client environments. As a Senior Applied AI Engineer (Virginia, onsite), you will define what “success” means, build and evaluate AI capabilities with engineering rigor, and operationalize them with the governance, logging, and traceability required for production.

What you’ll do

• Lead discovery with business and technical stakeholders to understand the workflow, the decision being supported, and the current standard for acceptable results.
• Define measurable success criteria before building, including accuracy targets, human review thresholds, acceptance conditions, and the definition of failure.
• Recommend against AI when a simpler solution is the right choice, including identifying when rules, process changes, or improved interfaces are the better path.
• Select the appropriate AI pattern for the problem, such as extraction, classification, summarization, retrieval, or an agentic workflow.
• Make and defend architecture decisions on where a workload should run, balancing quality, cost, latency, security, and authorization constraints.
• Build the full capability, including prompt and retrieval design, structured outputs, tool and function definitions, API integration, data handling, error states, and user interface needs.
• Create evaluation sets from real data, measure performance against them, and iterate based on results rather than intuition.
• Determine when a capability is ready for deployment and when it is not.
• Operationalize capabilities in the client environment, including governance, logging, and traceability requirements.
• Produce clear documentation that covers what the solution does, known limitations, validation approach, and what to do when results are incorrect.
• Monitor quality, cost, latency, and drift after launch, optimizing as better or less expensive options become available.
• Set direction for clients that cannot yet articulate it, shaping the roadmap through working proof rather than presentation material.
• Raise the technical level of engineers through mentoring, code/design reviews, and building team judgment.
• Contribute reusable patterns so each project does not start from scratch.
• Move between client delivery, internal product work, rapid proofs of concept, and internal enablement as needed.

What you bring

• 7+ years building and shipping production software.
• At least 2 years hands-on experience integrating large language models into applications, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, structured extraction, tool use, and agent patterns.
• Demonstrated experience evaluating AI system quality, including building test sets, defining metrics, and making deployment decisions based on evidence.
• Strong programming ability in a general-purpose language such as Python, TypeScript, or SQL, including API integration and working with imperfect data across the full application rather than only the AI layer.
• Proven ability to lead requirements conversations with non-technical stakeholders and translate feedback into a technical approach.
• Sound judgment on tradeoffs between accuracy, cost, latency, and complexity, with the ability to explain them to engineers and executives.
• Excellent written communication for client-facing documentation and design rationale.
• Ability to work with minimal direction in ambiguous situations, surfacing meaningful problems, proposing an approach, and driving decisions.
• A track record of improving other engineers’ capability, with or without a formal leadership title.
• U.S. Citizenship required, with ability to obtain and maintain any federal government background investigation, suitability determination, or security clearance required by assigned client engagements.

Benefits at Groundswell

• 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

Technologies you may use

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

Preferred qualifications

• Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Data Science, Business Analytics, Mathematics, or Computer Science.
• Experience with low-code or application platforms such as Appian, OutSystems, Mendix, Microsoft Power Platform, ServiceNow, or Salesforce.
• Public sector or regulated-industry delivery experience, including compliance and authorization processes.
• Experience with cloud AI services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure OpenAI.
• Familiarity with LLM evaluation or observability tooling.
• Prior consulting, solutions engineering, professional services, or embedded client work.

Note: 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.

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