AI Engineer & SETA Advisor (TS/SCI)

Saic; Columbia (MD); On-site; USD 240,001 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

SAIC seeks an AI Engineer - SETA in Columbia, MD to provide technical advisory support for the design, evaluation, and advancement of AI-enabled applications and workflows.

The role is hands-on, focusing on LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems, and orchestration frameworks, guiding development teams and government stakeholders while maintaining security and operational relevance.

Target salary range: $240,001 - $280,000 per year.

Qualifications

• Experience designing, building, integrating, or evaluating AI/ML-enabled applications or software tools.
• Familiarity with modern AI application patterns, including LLM-based applications, RAG, prompt engineering, agentic systems, and AI-assisted workflows.
• Working knowledge of agentic or orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, CrewAI, Haystack, LlamaIndex, or similar ecosystems.
• Experience with software development fundamentals, APIs, data handling, and system integration; ability to communicate tradeoffs clearly to engineers and government stakeholders.
• TS/SCI with Poly required.

Responsibilities

• Provide SETA support to government teams developing or assessing AI-enabled applications and tools.
• Advise on technical approaches for AI application design, prototyping, integration, and evaluation.
• Assess solutions involving LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, tool usage, agentic workflows, orchestration layers, prompt pipelines, and evaluation harnesses.
• Support the review of architectures, development approaches, model usage patterns, and technical risk areas.
• Advise on AI engineering considerations such as latency, reliability, observability, testability, guardrails, data flow, and system integration.
• Evaluate and compare modern AI frameworks, agentic libraries, and experimentation harnesses for mission use cases.
• Assist with the development of technical guidance, prototypes, engineering recommendations, and briefings for government stakeholders.
• Support test and evaluation activities for AI tools, including performance assessment, qualitative review, and workflow validation.
• Collaborate with platform engineers, product leads, mission users, and government leadership to keep AI efforts technically grounded and operationally relevant.
• Stay current on rapid AI ecosystem changes and provide informed recommendations on emerging tools and practices.

Skills

AI/ML development

Agentic frameworks

APIs

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

TS/SCI clearance

Security requirements

Education

Bachelor's degree + 18+ yrs experience

Master's degree + 16+ yrs experience

PhD/JD + 15+ yrs experience

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

Semantic Kernel

AutoGen

CrewAI

Haystack

LlamaIndex

Job description

SAIC seeks an AI Engineer - SETA in Columbia, MD to provide technical advisory support for the design, evaluation, and advancement of AI-enabled applications and workflows.

The role is hands-on, focusing on LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems, and orchestration frameworks, guiding development teams and government stakeholders while maintaining security and operational relevance.

Target salary range: $240,001 - $280,000 per year.