AI Application Engineer New Washington, DC

Simple Technology Solutions, LLC; Washington (District of Columbia); Remote; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation package

Health, dental, and vision insurance

Work from home stipend

Unlimited PTO

Paid holidays

Job summary

Simple Technology Solutions, LLC seeks an AI Application Engineer to build core AI solutions for federal clients. You will develop agents, retrieval pipelines, APIs, and user interfaces, emphasizing test-first development and weekly, shippable PRs linked to Jira cards.

Experience with AWS services (Bedrock, Lambda, API Gateway) and Claude Code is preferred. Strong Python/TypeScript skills, GitHub workflows, and CI/CD are essential for delivery across DEV, TST, STG, and PRD.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship generative AI application features, including retrieval-augmented generation and tool-using agents.
• Write unit and integration tests from requirements before code and ensure tests pass before PR.
• Develop on the OpenCORA module architecture when applicable.
• Leverage AWS-native services (Bedrock, Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3) as required.
• Use Claude Code and shared agents/skills for development workflow.
• Maintain a clean audit trail from requirements to Jira cards and PRs.
• Participate in backlog grooming, estimate work, and raise gaps early.
• Instrument apps with logs, tracing, and evaluation hooks for monitoring AI behavior.
• Review PRs with QA and support release activities across DEV/TST/STG/PRD.
• Apply secure coding practices including secrets handling and least-privilege access.

Skills

Python

TypeScript

Git

CI/CD

Cloud APIs

Retrieval-Augmented Gen

AWS

Bedrock

Terraform

Strong Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

Amazon Bedrock

Lambda

API Gateway

DynamoDB

S3

Terraform

Job description

At Simple Technology Solutions, our people are our priority. We know our team members are more than employees—they're parents, friends, volunteers, artists, and athletes. That's why we offer flexibility to help them thrive personally and professionally while delivering exceptional solutions to our Federal Government clients.

Our culture is built on collaboration, continuous learning, and excellence. We are mentors and thought leaders who share knowledge and foster growth. Recognized as a "Best Place to Work", we believe a range of perspectives helps us drive innovation and exceed customer expectations. At STS, taking care of our people isn’t a perk—it’s the standard.

As a HUBZone company, we also offer special incentives for team members living in qualified HUBZones. Check out the HUBZone map HERE to see if you qualify!

Simple Technology Solutions is looking for an AI Application Engineer to add to our team.

Quick Position Overview:

• US Citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance are required
• Bachelor's Degree is required
• Minimum of 8 years' position related experience is required
• AWS Developer or Solutions Architect certification (Associate) preferred for hire; the AWS and Anthropic Claude certifications listed under Required Certifications must be earned within 12 months of hire
• Remote position with occasional travel to client sites and STS events
• Candidates living in the DC Metro region (within driving distance for quarterly in-person team events) are strongly preferred; STS is a HUBZone company, so residence in a HUBZone is favored for remote candidates

The Role:

The AI Application Engineer builds the software at the heart of STS AI solutions: the agents, retrieval pipelines, APIs, and user-facing features that turn a federal customer's requirements into a working application. You work test-first from the project's requirements trio (use cases, mockups, specifications), using Claude Code and STS's shared agents and skills to move quickly while keeping quality high. Success looks like a steady stream of small, tested, reviewable pull requests that trace back to Jira cards and ship to real users every week. When a client requires AWS-native tooling instead of STS's standard toolchain, you are equally productive building on Amazon Bedrock, Lambda, and API Gateway.

The AI Application Engineer at STS will:

• Build and ship generative AI application features, including retrieval-augmented generation, tool-using agents, prompt pipelines, and the APIs and user interfaces that expose them.
• Practice test-driven development from the requirements trio, writing unit and integration tests from use cases and specifications before application code and ensuring tests pass before opening a pull request.
• Develop on the OpenCORA module architecture when the project uses it, building business-functionality modules on the core chassis and following its conventions.
• Build on AWS-native generative AI services, including Amazon Bedrock, Bedrock Agents and Knowledge Bases, Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and S3, when a client requires AWS services in place of STS's standard toolchain.
• Use Claude Code and the team's shared agents and skills as the primary development workflow, and contribute improvements to those agents and skills back to the team.
• Maintain a clean audit trail from requirements to Jira cards to GitHub pull requests, and keep commits small, reviewable, and tied to a card.
• Participate in backlog grooming, estimate and break down work, and raise requirement gaps early with the business analyst and tech lead.
• Instrument applications with logging, tracing, and evaluation hooks so that AI behavior can be measured, debugged, and improved in each environment.
• Review teammates' pull requests, pair with the quality engineer on end-to-end test coverage, and support release activities through DEV, TST, STG, and PRD.
• Apply secure coding practices appropriate to federal workloads, including secrets handling, input validation, and least-privilege access to data and services.

Education and Experience:

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience in addition to the minimum below
• Minimum of 8 years of professional software development experience building production web or cloud applications, including at least 2 years building applications on large language model APIs
• Demonstrated experience delivering with test-driven development and continuous integration on a team, and shipping to AWS
• Experience using AI coding assistants or agentic coding tools in daily work, ideally including authoring reusable prompts, agents, or skills for others
• Strong proficiency in Python and TypeScript, including modern frameworks for APIs and web front ends
• Working knowledge of retrieval-augmented generation design, vector stores, embeddings, prompt engineering, and evaluation of LLM outputs
• Hands‑on experience with Amazon Bedrock and core AWS application services (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, S3, IAM, CloudWatch)
• Fluency with Git and GitHub pull‑request workflows, Jira, and CI/CD pipelines
• Ability to read Terraform and understand how application code is deployed across DEV, TST, STG, and PRD
• Pragmatic builder who prefers small, shippable increments over large, perfect ones
• Takes requirements seriously and pushes back constructively when a use case or spec is unclear
• Self‑directed and comfortable owning outcomes on a small, senior team where everyone contributes across the lifecycle
• Curious and current on AI tooling; treats AI assistants as part of the team and holds their output to the same standard as human work
• Clear, candid communicator with federal clients and teammates; writes well and documents as a habit
• Bias toward fast delivery and early user feedback over conservative gating; learns from failure quickly

Required Certifications (to be earned within 12 months of hire)

• AWS Certified Developer - Associate or AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

Preferred Certifications

• Claude Certified Architect - Foundations (CCAR-F)
• CompTIA Security+

What We Offer:

• Competitive compensation package
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance plans
• Professional development and training
• Performance-based incentives
• 401(k) retirement savings plan
• Work from home stipend
• Unlimited PTO
• Paid holidays
• Professional development budget to be used for training and certifications

STS is committed to equal employment opportunity and merit-based employment practices. STS provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in all employment practices and decisions in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Employment decisions at STS are based on individual qualifications, performance, skills, and business needs, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, or any other status protected by applicable law.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, compensation, training, transfer, discipline, termination, layoff, recall, and leaves of absence.

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