Lead Agentic AI Engineer

Jobtailor; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor in McLean, VA is seeking an experienced leader to own and optimize the Mission Support Desk. You will design, implement, and maintain agentic AI workflows, triage and data retrieval, and ensure reliable production pipelines across multiple programs.

You will set quality standards, manage and develop a team, build playbooks, and track performance metrics to drive program success. Strong expertise in prompt engineering, RAG, and API ecosystems is required.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional experience in operations, technical program management, managed services, or AI/data roles.
• Experience designing and operating workflows powered by LLM-based agents or agentic AI frameworks (e.g., Claude, GPT-4, LangChain, AutoGen, or equivalents).
• Proven ability to manage a team and be accountable for its collective output.
• Strong working knowledge of prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and AI agent orchestration patterns.
• Experience working with enterprise API ecosystems REST, GraphQL, or pub/sub architectures at production scale.
• Ability to assess and communicate the reliability and limitations of AI outputs with precision; knows when to trust the model and when not to.
• Excellent written communication this role produces documentation, SOPs, and performance reports that program leads and executives depend on.
• Comfortably operating in distributed, multi-program environments with competing priorities and shifting program needs.

Responsibilities

• Own the desk's delivery. Be accountable for the full output of the Mission Support Desk across all programs it serves response quality, turnaround time, and the accuracy of AI-generated outputs.
• Design and operate agentic AI workflows. Build, refine, and maintain the agentic pipelines that support desk operations including triage, data retrieval, summarization, reporting, and escalation routing.
• Own the configuration, prompt architecture, and reliability of every workflow in production.
• Integrate across Orbis products. Work with Catalyst, Pulse, and Discovery to ensure the support desk can access and act on data flowing through the governed data fabric surfacing the right information at the right time, in the right format, for the right consumer.
• Set the quality bar. Define what "good" looks like for AI-assisted support output accuracy standards, human review checkpoints, escalation criteria, and documentation requirements.
• Hold the team and the systems to it.
• Manage and develop the team. Lead a team of support specialists. Identify skill gaps, give direct performance feedback, and build pathways for growth as AI tooling evolves. The people you develop are the capability you leave behind.
• Build and maintain playbooks. Author and continuously improve the standard operating procedures, prompt templates, agent configurations, and escalation runbooks that govern how the desk operates. Nothing should live only in someone's head.
• Track and report performance. Own the metrics that matter resolution rate, escalation rate, AI output accuracy, response time, and program satisfaction. Report clearly to program leadership and internal stakeholders, with proposed actions, not just status.
• Identify and close capability gaps. Recognize when a support need is not served by existing AI tooling, scope the gap clearly, and work with engineering or product teams to close it. Surface problems early with proposed mitigations.
• Coordinate across programs. Serve as the operational point of contact for program teams consuming support desk services. Translate their requirements into workflow updates and configuration changes without disrupting active operations.
• Stay current. Track developments in agentic AI tooling, LLM capabilities, and enterprise AI platforms. Assess what is worth adopting, at what pace, and for which programs and make those calls with confidence.

Skills

AI workflows

agentic AI

prompt engineering

retrieval-augmented generation

AI agent orchestration

API ecosystems

REST

GraphQL

LLM-based agents

workflow design

team management

accountability

communication

performance feedback

problem-solving

adaptability

leadership

documentation

collaboration

organizational skills

Job description

Responsibilities

• Own the desk's delivery. Be accountable for the full output of the Mission Support Desk across all programs it serves response quality, turnaround time, and the accuracy of AI-generated outputs.
• Design and operate agentic AI workflows. Build, refine, and maintain the agentic pipelines that support desk operations including triage, data retrieval, summarization, reporting, and escalation routing.
• Own the configuration, prompt architecture, and reliability of every workflow in production.
• Integrate across Orbis products. Work with Catalyst, Pulse, and Discovery to ensure the support desk can access and act on data flowing through the governed data fabric surfacing the right information at the right time, in the right format, for the right consumer.
• Set the quality bar. Define what "good" looks like for AI-assisted support output accuracy standards, human review checkpoints, escalation criteria, and documentation requirements.
• Hold the team and the systems to it.
• Manage and develop the team. Lead a team of support specialists. Identify skill gaps, give direct performance feedback, and build pathways for growth as AI tooling evolves. The people you develop are the capability you leave behind.
• Build and maintain playbooks. Author and continuously improve the standard operating procedures, prompt templates, agent configurations, and escalation runbooks that govern how the desk operates. Nothing should live only in someone's head.
• Track and report performance. Own the metrics that matter resolution rate, escalation rate, AI output accuracy, response time, and program satisfaction. Report clearly to program leadership and internal stakeholders, with proposed actions, not just status.
• Identify and close capability gaps. Recognize when a support need is not served by existing AI tooling, scope the gap clearly, and work with engineering or product teams to close it. Surface problems early with proposed mitigations.
• Coordinate across programs. Serve as the operational point of contact for program teams consuming support desk services. Translate their requirements into workflow updates and configuration changes without disrupting active operations.
• Stay current. Track developments in agentic AI tooling, LLM capabilities, and enterprise AI platforms. Assess what is worth adopting, at what pace, and for which programs and make those calls with confidence.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience in operations, technical program management, managed services, or AI/data roles
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating workflows powered by LLM-based agents or agentic AI frameworks (e.g., Claude, GPT-4, LangChain, AutoGen, or equivalents)
• Proven ability to manage a team and be accountable for its collective output, not just individual contributions
• Strong working knowledge of prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and AI agent orchestration patterns
• Experience working with enterprise API ecosystems REST, GraphQL, or pub/sub architectures at production scale
• Ability to assess and communicate the reliability and limitations of AI outputs with precision; knows when to trust the model and when not to
• Excellent written communication this role produces documentation, SOPs, and performance reports that program leads and executives depend on
• Comfortably operating in distributed, multi-program environments with competing priorities and shifting program needs.

Hard Skills

• AI workflows
• agentic AI
• prompt engineering
• retrieval-augmented generation
• AI agent orchestration
• API ecosystems
• REST
• GraphQL
• LLM-based agents
• workflow design

Soft Skills

• team management
• accountability
• communication
• performance feedback
• problem-solving
• adaptability
• leadership
• documentation
• collaboration
• organizational skills