AI Engineer

Booz Allen Hamilton; Washington; On-site; USD 99,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

Booz Allen Hamilton seeks an AI Engineer to design and deliver production-grade AI systems across the full lifecycle, from data ingestion to deployment and observability. You will own RAG pipelines, evaluation systems, and performance optimization for mission-critical federal environments.

The role requires hands-on experience building AI/ML production systems, including LLMs with LangChain/LlamaIndex, embedding pipelines, and cloud-native architectures on AWS.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience building production AI/ML systems.
• Experience with LLM systems using RAG frameworks such as LangChain and LlamaIndex.
• Experience designing embedding pipelines, including document ingestion, chunking, indexing, retrieval optimization, and API design with FastAPI/Flask/Node.js.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures on AWS (Bedrock, SageMaker, EKS/ECS, S3, IAM, Lambda, CloudWatch, Secrets Manager).
• Experience implementing observability (OpenTelemetry, Datadog, CloudWatch) and metrics pipelines for latency, throughput, and error rates.
• Experience optimizing performance with caching (Redis), parallelization, and automated evaluation pipelines.
• Experience supporting production AI services (deployment, monitoring, incident response, tuning, templates, versioning).
• Knowledge of AI security concepts (prompt injection, guardrails, data leakage prevention).
• Ability to obtain TS/SCI clearance.
• Bachelor’s degree in a related field.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver production-grade AI systems across the full AI lifecycle.
• Own RAG pipelines, evaluation systems, and performance optimization for scalable services.
• Build observable, secure, and efficient AI solutions for mission-critical federal environments.
• Develop APIs and services using FastAPI, Flask, or Node.js and design embedding pipelines for retrieval.
• Support production deployment, monitoring, incident response, and prompt management.

Skills

AI/ML production systems

LangChain & LlamaIndex

Embedding pipelines design

APIs with FastAPI/Flask/Node.js

AWS cloud services

Observability tooling

Performance optimization

AI security practices

TS/SCI eligibility

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Pinecone

Weaviate

FAISS

OpenSearch Vector Search

FastAPI

Flask

Node.js

AWS Bedrock

SageMaker

EKS

ECS

S3

IAM

Lambda

CloudWatch

Secrets Manager

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Redis

Job description

AI Engineer

The Opportunity

As an AI engineer, you’ll design and deliver production-grade AI systems. You’ll own RAG pipelines, evaluation systems, and performance optimization leveraging modern AI infrastructure and tooling to build scalable, observable, and efficient services. You’ll work across the full AI application lifecycle from enterprise data ingestion and retrieval to prompt engineering, evaluation, deployment, observability, and production operations building secure, scalable AI solutions for mission-critical federal environments.

You Have

• 3+ years of experience building production systems, including AI/ML applications
• Experience building LLM systems using RAG frameworks such as LangChain and LlamaIndex, or custom pipelines and vector stores with Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, or OpenSearch Vector Search
• Experience designing embedding pipelines, including document ingestion, chunking strategies, indexing, metadata filtering, retrieval optimization, and hybrid search, and designing APIs and services using FastAPI, Flask, or Node.js
• Experience with cloud-native architectures, including AWS services such as Bedrock, SageMaker, EKS or ECS, S3, IAM, Lambda, CloudWatch, and Secrets Manager, and agent frameworks and orchestration patterns such as LangGraph, tool calling, and function calling APIs
• Experience implementing observability, including logging and tracing with OpenTelemetry, Datadog, or CloudWatch, and metrics pipelines tracking latency, throughput, token usage, cache hit rate, and error rates
• Experience optimizing performance using caching layers such as Redis, parallelization or async workflows, and chunking and retrieval tuning, and designing automated evaluation pipelines using benchmark datasets, LLM-as-a-judge techniques, regression testing, and human evaluation workflows
• Experience supporting production AI services, including deployment, monitoring, incident response, debugging, and performance tuning, and managing prompt templates, prompt versioning, model configurations, and structured outputs across development and production environments
• Knowledge of AI security concepts, including prompt injection, jailbreak resistance, data leakage prevention, guardrails, secure prompt design, and responsible AI practices
• Ability to obtain a TS/SCI clearance
• Bachelor’s degree

Nice If You Have

• Experience supporting DoD clients or other federal mission environments
• Experience with high-performance inference systems such as vLLM, Ray Serve, or Triton Inference Server
• Experience with semantic caching and embedding reuse strategies
• Experience with guardrail frameworks such as Rebuff, Guardrails.ai, or custom filtering systems
• Experience integrating AI applications with enterprise data platforms and knowledge repositories such as Databricks, Snowflake, OpenSearch, PostgreSQL, SharePoint, Confluence, or S3-based document stores
• Experience deploying AI workloads into AWS GovCloud, IL4 or IL5 environments, or other secure cloud environments
• Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging technologies such as Amazon SQS, Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Amazon EventBridge
• Experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP) or modern AI agent interoperability standards

Clearance

Applicants selected will be subject to a security investigation and may need to meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.

Compensation

At Booz Allen, we celebrate your contributions, provide you with opportunities and choices, and support your total well-being. Our offerings include health, life, disability, financial, and retirement benefits, as well as paid leave, professional development, tuition assistance, work-life programs, and dependent care. Our recognition awards program acknowledges employees for exceptional performance and superior demonstration of our values. Full-time and part-time employees working at least 20 hours a week on a regular basis are eligible to participate in Booz Allen’s benefit programs. Individuals that do not meet the threshold are only eligible for select offerings, not inclusive of health benefits. We encourage you to learn more about our total benefits by visiting the Resource page on our Careers site and reviewing Our Employee Benefits page.

Salary at Booz Allen is determined by various factors, including but not limited to location, the individual’s particular combination of education, knowledge, skills, competencies, and experience, as well as contract-specific affordability and organizational requirements. The projected compensation range for this position is $99,000.00 to $225,000.00 (annualized USD). The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position and is just one component of Booz Allen’s total compensation package for employees. This posting will close within 90 days from the Posting Date.

Identity Statement

As part of the hiring process, we will ask you to complete an identity verification process that leverages advanced biometrics and artificial intelligence to ensure authenticity and protect against identity fraud. You are expected to be on camera during interviews and assessments. We reserve the right to take your picture to verify your identity and prevent fraud.

Candidate AI Usage Policy

AI is a part of our daily work at Booz Allen, and we are committed to the responsible and ethical use of AI tools. However, we want to ensure a fair candidate process based on your own skills and knowledge. As part of this commitment, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) or other tools to assist with responses during interviews (whether in-person or virtual) is prohibited unless permission is explicitly provided.

Work Model

Our people-first culture prioritizes the benefits of collaboration, whether it occurs in person or virtually. To support engagement and effective communication, employees working virtually are generally expected to have their cameras on during meetings.

• Remote : If this position is listed as remote, there may still be occasions when you are required to work in person at a Booz Allen or customer facility.

• Hybrid : If this position is listed as hybrid, you will be expected to work from a Booz Allen facility frequently, in alignment with leadership expectations and the needs of the role. You may also be required to work from or visit a customer facility.

• Onsite : If this position is listed as onsite, work will primarily be performed at a Booz Allen office or customer facility, where employees will collaborate directly with colleagues and customers as required by the role.

Commitment to Non-Discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local, or international law.