Prompt Engineer

Steampunk; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 115,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Steampunk is seeking a seasoned Prompt Engineer to design, test, and refine interaction patterns for AI systems across client engagements. You will shape user experiences, ensure safe and aligned outputs, and collaborate with AI Developers, Evaluation Scientists, and product/design teams to craft prompts, context, and multi-turn flows.

You will lead experiments, optimize retrieval strategies, and translate domain content into structured formats for improved reasoning and reduced errors,

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Data Science, or related discipline.
• 5+ years of total experience.
• 2+ years in AI/ML, NLP, content design, UX writing, or structured interaction design.
• Demonstrated experience designing and testing prompts for LLMs in real applications.
• Familiarity with RAG architectures, vector databases, embeddings, and context retrieval strategies.

Responsibilities

• Design, test, and refine prompts to improve accuracy, reasoning, and usability of generative AI outputs.
• Develop context management strategies including document selection, summarization, and retrieval augmentation.
• Collaborate with developers to implement prompt engineering in RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, and evaluation harnesses.
• Conduct structured experiments (A/B tests, rubric-based evaluations) to measure prompt performance.
• Define evaluation metrics with AI Evaluation Scientists for quality, relevance, safety, and hallucination reduction.
• Work with UX/product teams to develop interaction flows that guide user inputs and reduce cognitive load.
• Translate complex content into structured, LLM-friendly formats to improve system reasoning.

Skills

Prompt engineering

NLP

RAG architectures

Data analysis

UX writing

Cross-team collaboration

Experience with prompting techniques

Safe/ governance prompts

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, or Data Science

Tools

Python

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Job description

Overview

We are seeking a Prompt Engineer to design, test, and refine interaction patterns for generative AI systems used across our client engagements. This role is central to shaping how users experience AI-powered applications and ensuring that LLM outputs are relevant, reliable, safe, and aligned to mission needs. The Prompt Engineer will work closely with AI Developers, LLMOps Engineers, Evaluation Scientists, and product/design teams to craft prompts, structure context, improve retrieval strategies, and create intuitive multi-turn interaction flows.

Contributions

• Design, iterate, and optimize prompts, templates, and prompt chains that improve the accuracy, reasoning, and usability of generative AI outputs.
• Develop context management strategies, including document selection, summarization, formatting, role instructions, and retrieval augmentation patterns.
• Partner with developers to implement prompt engineering techniques within RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, evaluation harnesses, and application UX layers.
• Conduct structured experiments—including A/B tests and rubric-based evaluations—to measure prompt performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Collaborate with AI Evaluation Scientists to define evaluation metrics tied to quality, relevance, consistency, safety, and hallucination reduction.
• Work closely with UX and product design teams to develop interaction flows that guide user inputs, clarify system capabilities, and reduce cognitive load.
• Help translate complex subject-matter content into structured, LLM-friendly formats that improve system reasoning and reduce error rates.
• Support the design of safe output behaviors by implementing guardrails, filtering strategies, and context constraints aligned with governance principles.
• Document prompt patterns, style guides, failure modes, and best practices for internal reuse and team enablement.
• Stay up to date on emerging prompting strategies (e.g., CoT, self-critique, tool use scaffolding, function calling, agentic behaviors) and share insights with the team.
• You will contribute to the growth of our AI & Data Exploitation Practice!

Qualifications

• Ability to hold a position of public trust with the U.S. government.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Data Science, or related discipline.
• 5+ years of total experience.
• 2+ years of experience in AI/ML, NLP, content design, UX writing, or similar roles involving structured interaction design.
• Demonstrated experience designing and testing prompts for LLMs in real applications (GPT-style models, Claude, Gemini, Llama, etc.).
• Familiarity with RAG architectures, vector databases, embeddings, and context retrieval strategies.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to run structured experiments, analyze model outputs, and document findings.
• Proficiency with Python and common AI frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) is preferred.
• Experience with UX design principles, information architecture, or conversational design is highly valuable.
• Understanding of responsible AI concepts, including safety, privacy, bias, and governance-aligned prompting strategies.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate domain-specific content into clear, effective AI instructions.
• Ability to collaborate across engineering, product, governance, and evaluation teams to shape coherent user‑AI interactions.

About steampunk

Steampunk relies on several factors to determine salary, including but not limited to geographic location, contractual requirements, education, knowledge, skills, competencies, and experience. The projected compensation range for this position is $115,000 to $140,000. The estimate displayed represents a typical annual salary range for this position. Annual salary is just one aspect of Steampunk’s total compensation package for employees. Learn more about additional Steampunk benefits here.