AI Engineer for Mission-Scale Defense AI

Carnegie-Mellon-University; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Carnegie Mellon University’s SEI AI Division is seeking an AI Engineer to translate cutting‑edge AI concepts into mission‑scale solutions for defense and national security. You will work with large foundation models, design autonomous agents, and deploy robust AI systems for government sponsors.

The role requires a strong ML theory foundation, experience fine‑tuning LLMs, and proficiency in Python with C/C++ or Java.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, ML, Statistics, Applied Math, or related field with 8+ years experience, or MS with 5+ years.
• Must be able to obtain/maintain DoW security clearance and work onsite 5 days/week in Pittsburgh, PA or Arlington, VA.
• Proficiency in Python and at least one compiled language; experience with REST/GraphQL APIs and containerization.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and fine‑tune AI models for mission scale applications.
• Build autonomous agents and multi‑step pipelines; deploy retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) pipelines.
• Create end‑to‑end data pipelines, ETL, and back‑end services; enable CI/CD and secure deployment.
• Mentor junior staff and participate in reviews and documentation; stay current with AI safety and new architectures.

Skills

Python

ML theory

LLM fine-tuning

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field

MS degree in related field

Tools

Docker/Kubernetes

Hugging Face Transformers

LangChain

REST/GraphQL APIs

TensorFlow/PyTorch/JAX

PEFT/LoRA

Job description

Carnegie Mellon University’s SEI AI Division is seeking an AI Engineer to translate cutting‑edge AI concepts into mission‑scale solutions for defense and national security. You will work with large foundation models, design autonomous agents, and deploy robust AI systems for government sponsors.

The role requires a strong ML theory foundation, experience fine‑tuning LLMs, and proficiency in Python with C/C++ or Java.