Data Engineer

Cornerstone Defense LLC; Herndon (VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Cornerstone Defense LLC in Herndon, Virginia is seeking a Data Engineer to lead data architecture and engineering delivery for AI/ML/GenAI solutions. The role involves partnering with data science and ML engineering teams to create production-ready pipelines while ensuring data security and scalability.

Qualified candidates will have a Bachelor's degree in a related field and extensive experience with data science, machine learning, and cloud platforms, particularly in Generative AI, making this an essential role in supporting innovative technology solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Data Science or related field.
• 6+ years of consulting experience leading delivery teams.
• 5+ years of experience in Generative AI/LLMs.

Responsibilities

• Lead data architecture and engineering delivery for AI/ML solutions.
• Design operational data foundations for LLM-powered applications.
• Translate use cases into production-ready pipelines.

Skills

Data Architecture

AI/ML Implementation

Cloud Platforms

Natural Language Processing

Software Application Architecture

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

Google Cloud

Azure

Job description

Data Engineer

Location: Herndon, Virginia

Clearance: Active TS/SCI with Polygraph needed to apply

The Data Engineer will lead the data architecture and engineering delivery that enables AI/ML/GenAI solutions, ensuring data is trusted, secure, observable, and scalable from ingestion through consumption. You will design and operationalize modern data and retrieval foundations to support LLM-powered applications including patterns such as RAG, embeddings, vector search, and governed access to structured and unstructured data. You will be partnering with a team working with data science, ML engineering, and product stakeholders to translate use cases into production‑ready pipelines and platforms with strong data governance, lineage, quality controls, and monitoring. This role blends hands‑on technical ability with delivery management and team development, driving consistent engineering standards and measurable outcomes in client environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Data Science, Information Systems, or related field.
• 6+ years of consulting experience leading delivery teams, including onshore and offshore team members.
• 6+ years of experience gathering non-functional requirements and defining application architecture frameworks, including validation and testing deliverables.
• 5+ years of experience working in an AI environment.
• 5+ years of experience translating requirements into client ready design documents.
• 5+ years of experience in software application architecture analysis, design, and delivery.
• 5+ years of experience executing full system development life cycle implementations.
• Certifications in AI/ML technologies and Cloud platforms (e.g., AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty, Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer, Azure AI Engineer, Azure Data Scientist, or Azure Solutions Architect).
• 5+ years of experience in Data Science, Statistics, and Machine Learning.
• 5+ years of experience in Generative AI/LLMs, preferably experienced in delivering and productionizing.
• 5+ years of experience in machine learning model development, natural language processing, and data analysis; experienced in supervised and unsupervised learning, feature engineering, model training, and deployment.
• 5+ years of experience implementing cloud‑based AI/ML workloads on any of AWS, Microsoft, and Azure.