AI Engineer - Mission Innovation Lab

Software Engineering Institute | Carnegie Mellon University; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Software Engineering Institute | Carnegie Mellon University is seeking an AI Engineer who thrives at the intersection of research and production. You will translate cutting‑edge AI concepts into mission‑scale solutions, working with large models and agentic workflows.

Expect collaboration with researchers, engineers, and government sponsors on robust, secure AI capabilities. The role focuses on designing AI models, autonomous pipelines, and retrieval‑augmented generation, with hands‑on use of

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 5+ years or MS with 5+ years in related fields.
• Strong Python and one compiled language (C/C++ or Java).
• Experience fine-tuning LLMs and using LangChain or similar tools.
• Background investigation and ability to obtain DoW security clearance.
• Onsite work at SEI offices in Pittsburgh, PA or Arlington, VA.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and fine-tune a variety of AI models.
• Create autonomous agents and multi-step pipelines; manage stateful interactions.
• Build RAG pipelines and end-to-end data pipelines feeding models.
• Develop CI/CD pipelines, containerization, model registries, and security checks.
• Produce prototypes, benchmarks, and robustness testing; mentor staff.
• Collaborate with government sponsors and engineers; document designs.

Skills

Python

C/C++

Java

ML theory

PEFT/LoRA

LangChain

LLMs

ModelContext

REST/GraphQL

Docker/Kubernetes

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/ML/Math

MS degree

Tools

Hugging Face Transformers

LangChain

Docker

Kubernetes

TensorFlow

PyTorch

Airflow/Prefect/Ray

Job description

At the SEI AI Division, we conduct research in applied artificial intelligence and the engineering questions related to the practical design and implementation of AI technologies and systems. We currently lead a community-wide movement to mature the discipline of AI Engineering for Defense and National Security.

As our government customers adopt AI and machine learning toprovideleap-ahead mission capabilities, we

• build real-world, mission-scale AI capabilities through solving practical engineering problems

• discover and define the processes, practices, and tools to support operationalizing AI for robust, secure, scalable, and human-centered mission capabilities

• prepare our customers to be ready for the unique challenges of adopting, deploying, using, andmaintainingAI capabilities

• identifyand investigate emerging AI and AI-adjacent technologies that are rapidly transforming the technology landscape
  

Are you creative, curious, energetic, collaborative, technology-focused, and hard-working? Are you interested in making a difference by bringing innovation to government organizations and beyond?

Overview

As an AI Engineer who thrives at the intersection of deep‑learning research and production‑grade software development, you will translate cutting‑edge AI concepts into robust, mission‑scale solutions for thewarfightingcommunity. You will work comfortably with large‑scale foundation models such as GPT andLLaMA, designing and deploying agentic workflows, as well as apply and advance traditionalMLresearch and engineering across domains such as naturallanguage processing, computer vision, timeseries forecasting, and other predictive analytics. You will collaborate closely with senior researchers, software engineers, and government sponsors to define problem statements, iterate on experimental designs, and deliver secure, reliable AI capabilities that meet stringentmissionrequirements.

The Mission Innovation Lab within the SEI’s AI Division works with the defense and national security community to translatethe“recentlypossible” in AI into reliable mission and warfighting capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop,and fine‑tunea variety of AI models.

• Design autonomous agents and multi‑step pipelines usingLangChain,ReAct, tool‑calling, or custom orchestration; employ the ModelContext protocol to manage stateful interactions.

• Build Retrieval‑Augmented Generation pipelines that combine external knowledge bases with LLMs to improve factual accuracy forwarfightingapplications.

• Implement end‑to‑end data pipelines, ETL processes, and back‑end services (Python, C/C++, Java) that feed data to models.

• Create CI/CD pipelines for model training, validation, containerized deployment (Docker/Kubernetes), and security scanning;maintainmodel registries, monitoring, and version control of context protocols.

• Produce rapid prototypes, run benchmarks, and conduct robustness/adversarial testing in realistic environments.

• Work closely with senior ML engineers, software developers, and government customers; mentor junior staff and contribute to design reviews and documentation.

• Stay current with emerging LLM architectures, agentic paradigms, PEFT/LoRAmethods, and AI‑safety techniques; translate new research into operational capabilities.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science,Machine Learning, Statistics, Applied Mathematics, or a related field with at least eight (8) years of relevant experience, or a MS degree in the same with at least five (5) years of relevant experience.

• You will be subject to a background investigation and must be able to obtain andmaintainan active Department ofWar(DoW) security clearance.
  

• You must be able and willing to work onsite 5 days per week at an SEI office in either Pittsburgh, PA or Arlington, VA.

• Proficiencyin Python and at least one compiled language (C/C++ or Java); experience with REST/GraphQLAPIs and containerization.

• Strong grasp ofMLtheory (supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement learning) and evaluation metrics.

• Hands‑on experience fine‑tuning LLMs and using frameworks such as Hugging Face Transformers,LangChain, or comparable agent tools.

• Familiarity with building RAG pipelines (vector stores, dense/sparse retrievers).

• Experience applying PEFT/LoRAmethods (e.g.,LoRA, adapters) to large models.

• Understanding of ModelContext protocols for managing model state across multi‑turn interactions.

• Experience building evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, or data quality pipelines

• Experience with TensorFlow,PyTorch, or JAX; knowledge of data‑pipeline tools (Airflow, Prefect, Ray) is a plus.

• Awareness ofDevSecOpspractices (CI/CD,GitOps, container security scanning, model‑registry concepts) is desirable.

Desired Experience

• Deploying LLM APIs (FastAPI,gRPC) at scale, handlinglatencyand load balancing.

• Building multi‑tool agents, planner‑executor loops, or tool‑calling pipelines for complex decision‑making.

• Conducting adversarial testing, implementing input sanitization, and contributing to AI‑safety research.

• Utilizing GPU/TPU resources, mixed‑precision training, and distributed training frameworks such asDeepSpeedorZeRO.

• Prior work on defense, intelligence, or government‑focused AI projects and familiarity withDoWacquisition or compliance processes.

• Contributing to open‑source AIandMLlibraries, agentic frameworks, or context‑protocol implementations.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• Analytical thinking: decompose complex AI problems into tractable components and iterate rapidly.

• Strong written and verbal communicationskillsfor documenting designs and presenting results to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

• Proven teamwork: collaborate in interdisciplinary groups, mentor peers, and contribute to shared codebases.

• High curiosity and autonomy: proactively explore emerging technologies and integrate them into mission work.

Location

Arlington, VA, Pittsburgh, PA

Job Function

Software/Applications Development/Engineering

Position Type

Staff – Regular

Full time/Part time

Full time

Pay Basis

Salary

More Information:

• Carnegie Mellon University is an Equal Opportunity Employer/Disability/Veteran.

• Statement of Assurance