Artificial Intelligence Subject Matter Expert (CBP)

Agile Defense; Ashburn (VA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health Insurance

Life Insurance

Paid Time Off

Retirement Plan

Learning and Development

Job summary

Agile Defense in Ashburn, VA is seeking an Artificial Intelligence Subject Matter Expert to design, test, and align AI/ML models for CBP missions. You will work with program leadership, engineering teams, and security staff to ensure models are accurate, explainable, and safe before deployment.

Active CBP BI or DoD clearance preferred; a $10,000 signing bonus applies for eligible candidates. The role emphasizes rigor over novelty and readiness to operate under federal accreditation requirements.

Qualifications

• Experience taking ML models to production with real users.
• Experience in regulated or federal environments requiring explainability and defensibility.
• Ability to describe model failure modes and impact clearly.

Responsibilities

• Design, test, and align AI/ML models for operational settings.
• Work with leadership, engineering, and security staff to obtain accreditation.
• Ensure models are accurate, safe, and auditable before deployment.
• Communicate limitations and trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.

Skills

Machine learning

Regulated environments

Explainable AI

AI lifecycle

Job description

About Agile Defense

At Agile Defense we know that action defines the outcome and new challenges require new solutions. That’s why we always look to the future and embrace change with an unmovable spirit and the courage to build for what comes next.

Our vision is to bring adaptive innovation to support our nation's most important missions through the seamless integration of advanced technologies, elite minds, and unparalleled agility-leveraging a foundation of speed, flexibility, and ingenuity to strengthen and protect our nation’s vital interests.

Title: Artificial Intelligence Subject Matter Expert (AI SME) (CBP)

Clearance: Active CBP Background Investigation (CBP BI) and EOD strongly preferred. We can begin processing for candidates who do not hold one.

Citizenship: U.S. Citizenship required

Location: Ashburn, VA

Salary Range: [Pending]

Signing Bonus: $10,000 for candidates with an active CBP BI. Payable after 90 days; standard terms apply.

Travel: Rare, as needed

The Role

U.S. Customs and Border Protection runs continuous operations across more than 300 land, air, and sea ports of entry, plus Border Patrol stations and the Air and Marine Operations Center. Applying artificial intelligence in that environment is not the same problem as applying it somewhere the cost of a wrong answer is a bad recommendation. A model that runs against operational data here has to be accurate, explainable, and safe under federal accreditation, or it does not ship, no matter how well it performs in a lab.

You are the technical authority on what that requires. You will design, test, and align AI and machine learning models so they perform reliably in a professional operational setting, working alongside program leadership, engineering teams, and the security staff who have to sign off on what you build before it runs against real data.

Two things are worth knowing before you apply. This role exists to bring rigor, not to chase what is newest. And a meaningful part of the job is being the person in the room who can tell the difference between a model that looks impressive in a demo and one that is actually safe to run.

What Success Looks Like

Objective 1: Design models that are accurate enough to trust with real decisions

• Model performance gets validated against real operational conditions, not only against a clean benchmark dataset.
• Where a model is wrong, you can say how it is wrong and how often, rather than reporting a single accuracy number and stopping there.
• You can explain a model's behavior to someone who did not build it, in terms they can evaluate.

Objective 2: Keep models safe and aligned once they are running against real data

• Model behavior gets monitored after deployment, not just validated once before it.
• Drift and degraded performance get caught before they change an operational outcome.
• Failure modes are documented and understood before a model goes live, not discovered afterward.

Objective 3: Get AI capability through federal review without the review becoming a guessing game for everyone else

• Documentation and evidence for a security or accreditation review come out of your normal development process.
• You can tell an engineering team early what an AI capability will need to clear review, before they have built around an assumption that will not survive it.
• Reviewers get a straight answer about what a model does and does not do.

Objective 4: Build technical judgment into the program that outlasts any one model

• Other engineers and program staff come to you before committing to an AI approach, not after it has already been built.
• Where AI is not the right tool for a problem, you can say so and be heard.
• Standards for evaluating and deploying models exist and get used on the next project, not reinvented each time.

What You Bring

Preferred Experience

• You have taken a machine learning model from prototype to a production system that real people depended on.
• You have worked in a regulated or federal environment where a model's decisions had to be explainable and defensible, not only accurate.
• You have caught a model failure before it reached a decision that mattered, and can describe how.
• You are comfortable across the model lifecycle: data, training, validation, deployment, and monitoring, rather than specialized in only one stage.
• You hold an active CBP BI, a fitness determination at another DHS component, or an active DoD clearance. Any of these shortens your start date.
• You can talk about the limits of a model as clearly as you talk about its capabilities.

A note on timing

We are staffing this program now. If you already hold an active CBP BI and EOD, your start date is short and a $10,000 signing bonus comes with the role, payable after 90 days under standard terms. We would like to talk this week.

If you do not, we can begin processing a CBP BI for you. That takes months rather than weeks, so applying now means joining a pipeline rather than starting immediately. We would rather tell you that up front than have you find out after you apply.

Employee Benefits

Agile's benefits offerings include, dependent upon position, Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, Holiday Pay, short-term and long-term Disability, Retirement and Learning and Development opportunities as well as other optional benefit elections.

Our Core Values

Employees of Agile Defense are our number one priority, and the importance we place on our culture here is fundamental. Our culture is alive and evolving, but it always stays true to its roots. Here, you are valued as a family member, and we believe that we can accomplish great things together. Agile Defense has been highly successful in the past few years due to our employees and the culture we create together.

What makes us Agile? We call it the 6Hs, the values that define our culture and guide everything we do. Together, these values infuse vibrancy, integrity, and a tireless work ethic into advancing the most important national security and critical civilian missions. It's how we show up every day. It's who we are.

• Happy - Be Infectious. Happiness multiplies and creates a positive and connected environment where motivation and satisfaction have an outsized effect on everything we do.
• Helpful - Be Supportive. Being helpful is the foundation of teamwork, resulting in a supportive atmosphere where collaboration flourishes, and collective success is celebrated.
• Honest - Be Trustworthy. Honesty serves as our compass, ensuring transparent communication and ethical conduct, essential to who we are and the complex domains we support.
• Humble - Be Grounded. Success is not achieved alone, humility ensures a culture of mutual respect, encouraging open communication, and a willingness to learn from one another and take on any task.
• Hungry - Be Eager. Our hunger for excellence drives an insatiable appetite for innovation and continuous improvement, propelling us forward in the face of new and unprecedented challenges.
• Hustle - Be Driven. Hustle is reflected in our relentless work ethic, where we are each committed to going above and beyond to advance the mission and achieve success.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities