AI/NLP Research Engineer for Secure Systems

Auburn University; Auburn (AL); On-site; USD 100,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Auburn University invites applications for a Research Engineer to advance AI development and applied research in security contexts. The role focuses on NLP, LLMs, RAG, and deploying AI-powered applications in cloud environments, with collaboration across AI labs and external partners.

The position will be based in the Institute’s Washington D.C. office, with responsibilities spanning model training, deployment, and collaboration on grants. Travel to Huntsville/Auburn may be required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering that is relevant to the area of research.
• Level II: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering that is relevant to the area of research and 2 years of Experience in engineering and research practices and principles.
• Level III: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering that is relevant to the area of research and 4years of Experience in engineering and research practices and principles.
• Level IV: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering that is relevant to the area of research and 6 years of Experience in engineering and research practices and principles.
• Level V: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering that is relevant to the area of research and principles and 8 years of Experience.
• Level VI: Bachelor’s degree in Engineering that is relevant to the area of research and 10 years of Experience in engineering and research practices and principles.

Responsibilities

• Understand NLP and model training, fine‑tuning, and evaluation.
• Utilize LLMs, prompt engineering and optimization, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).
• Utilize and incorporate web service APIs.
• Build software using web service APIs.
• Build AI-powered applications and design APIs, microservices, data pipelines and ETL workflows, and understand vector databases.
• Execute model deployment and monitoring.
• Understand SQL and NoSQL databases, data preprocessing and cleaning, and working with structured & unstructured datasets.
• Build AI agents and autonomous workflows, front-end frameworks (React, Next.js), security & privacy in AI systems, and scaling AI products to production.
• Understand embeddings and semantic search.
• Work in AWS or MS cloud.
• Build/deploy applications into Department of War environments.
• Document technical findings, vulnerability reports, and operational assessments.

Skills

NLP

LLMs

Prompt engineering

RAG

APIs

React

Next.js

SQL

NoSQL

Embeddings

Semantic search

AWS or Azure/MS cloud

Documentation

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering

2 years of Experience

4 years of Experience

6 years of Experience

8 years of Experience

10 years of Experience

Substitutions allowed for Education

Tools

React

Next.js

SQL

NoSQL

Job description

Auburn University invites applications for a Research Engineer to advance AI development and applied research in security contexts. The role focuses on NLP, LLMs, RAG, and deploying AI-powered applications in cloud environments, with collaboration across AI labs and external partners.

The position will be based in the Institute’s Washington D.C. office, with responsibilities spanning model training, deployment, and collaboration on grants. Travel to Huntsville/Auburn may be required.