Mission AI Engineer: Defense-Ready LLMs & Agent Systems

Software Engineering Institute | Carnegie Mellon University; Arlington (VA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in Arlington, VA and Pittsburgh, PA seeks an AI Engineer to translate cutting-edge AI concepts into robust, mission-scale solutions for defense communities.

You will work with foundation models (GPT, LLaMA), build agentic workflows, and deploy end-to-end AI capabilities with robust security, reliability, and scalability considerations, collaborating with senior researchers and government sponsors.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, ML, Statistics, Applied Math or related field with 8+ years experience, or MS with 5+ years
• Background check and active DoW security clearance required
• Onsite work 5 days/week at SEI offices in Pittsburgh, PA or Arlington, VA
• Proficiency in Python and at least one compiled language (C/C++/Java); REST/GraphQL; containerization
• Strong ML theory and evaluation metrics knowledge
• Hands‑on fine‑tuning LLMs with frameworks like Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain or similar
• Familiarity with RAG pipelines, vector stores, and dense/sparse retrievers
• Experience with PEFT/LoRA methods on large models
• Understanding ModelContext protocols for multi-turn interactions
• Experience with TensorFlow, PyTorch, or JAX; data pipelines (Airflow/Prefect/Ray) a plus
• Awareness of DevSecOps practices is desirable

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and fine-tune AI models for mission-scale use cases
• Build autonomous agents and multi-step pipelines using LangChain and tool-calling
• Create RAG pipelines combining external bases with LLMs for factual accuracy
• Develop end-to-end data pipelines and back-end services (Python, C/C++, Java) feeding models
• Set up CI/CD, containerized deployment (Docker/Kubernetes), and security scanning
• Maintain model registries, monitoring, and versioning for context protocols
• Produce rapid prototypes, run benchmarks, and perform robustness testing
• Collaborate with government sponsors, mentor junior staff, contribute to reviews/documentation
• Stay current with LLM architectures, PEFT/LoRA, and AI-safety practices

Skills

Python

C/C++

Java

REST/GraphQL APIs

ML theory

LLM fine-tuning

LangChain

PEFT/LoRA

ModelContext protocols

TensorFlow

PyTorch

JAX

DeepSpeed/ZeRO

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, ML, Statistics, Applied Mathematics

MS degree in related field with 5+ years experience

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

FastAPI

gRPC

Airflow

Prefect

Ray

Job description

The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in Arlington, VA and Pittsburgh, PA seeks an AI Engineer to translate cutting-edge AI concepts into robust, mission-scale solutions for defense communities.

You will work with foundation models (GPT, LLaMA), build agentic workflows, and deploy end-to-end AI capabilities with robust security, reliability, and scalability considerations, collaborating with senior researchers and government sponsors.