Secret-Cleared AI Developer (Python) - Hybrid

Socket.dev; Arlington (VA); On-site; USD 73,000 - 136,000; Full time

Job summary

DXC Technology in Arlington, Virginia, is seeking a skilled software engineer to design, develop, test, and maintain AI agents and generative AI applications using Python in a hybrid on-site environment. You will build agent workflows, refine prompts, implement tool integration, and develop retrieval-augmented generation capabilities, with an emphasis on reliability, grounding, and security.

US citizenship with an active Secret clearance is required; a CS or related degree and 3+ years of Python

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS or related field.
• 3+ years of hands-on software development with Python.
• Strong Python development skills including OO design, modules/packages, dependency management, exception handling, logging, testing, debugging, and API development.
• Hands-on experience developing AI agents, agentic workflows, LLM-based applications, or comparable generative AI capabilities.
• Strong hands-on prompt engineering experience, including development and refinement of system prompts, task instructions, few-shot examples, structured outputs, grounding strategies, tool-use instructions, and context-management approaches.
• Experience developing applications that interact with large language models through APIs or SDKs.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain AI agents and generative AI applications using Python.
• Develop agent workflows that use large language models to interpret user requests, reason across multiple steps, select appropriate tools, retrieve information, and generate grounded responses.
• Design, test, and iteratively refine system prompts, task instructions, tool-use instructions, few-shot examples, response formats, and other prompt-engineering components.
• Apply prompt-engineering techniques to improve response accuracy, consistency, grounding, tool selection, adherence to business rules, and overall user experience.
• Develop agent orchestration logic including state management, context management, tool selection, multi-step execution, retries, exception handling, and recovery.
• Develop Python application components using boto3, botocore, and other appropriate SDKs and libraries to interact with AI, data, storage, security, and supporting cloud services.
• Integrate agents with approved tools, APIs, Model Context Protocol (MCP) services, databases, knowledge sources, and enterprise applications.
• Work with AI Integration Engineers to define tool requirements, expected inputs and outputs, validation rules, and integration behaviors needed by AI agents.
• Build and optimize retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities including query formulation, retrieval logic, context assembly, grounding, semantic search, and use of retrieved information within agent workflows.
• Develop prompt and context strategies for working with structured and unstructured enterprise information while minimizing irrelevant or unsupported model responses.
• Implement structured outputs, schema validation, response validation, guardrails, error handling, and other controls required for reliable enterprise AI behavior.
• Develop reusable Python libraries, utilities, agent components, prompts, and development patterns that can be used across multiple AI use cases.
• Create automated unit, integration, regression, and AI evaluation tests covering agent workflows, prompts, tool selection, model responses, retrieval quality, and application behavior.
• Develop and maintain evaluation methods for response quality, factual grounding, hallucination, tool-use accuracy, retrieval effectiveness, latency, consistency, and regression.
• Analyze model and agent behavior using logs, prompts, responses, tool calls, retrieved context, and downstream results to identify and correct performance or reliability issues.
• Compare and evaluate models, prompting approaches, retrieval strategies, and agent designs based on accuracy, reliability, performance, maintainability, security, and suitability for the use case.
• Collaborate with functional experts and Product Owners to translate business problems into clearly defined AI use cases, expected behaviors, acceptance criteria, and measurable outcomes.
• Support demonstrations, user testing, defect resolution, production validation, monitoring, and continuous improvement of deployed AI capabilities.
• Maintain source code, prompts, technical designs, configuration, evaluation criteria, support documentation, and other AI development artifacts.
• Participate in code reviews, architecture discussions, backlog refinement, demonstrations, testing, release readiness, and other Agile/SAFe delivery activities.
• Other duties as assigned.

Skills

Python development

Prompt engineering

LLM workflows

APIs

Testing & debugging

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

boto3

botocore

SDKs for AI

Job description

DXC Technology in Arlington, Virginia, is seeking a skilled software engineer to design, develop, test, and maintain AI agents and generative AI applications using Python in a hybrid on-site environment. You will build agent workflows, refine prompts, implement tool integration, and develop retrieval-augmented generation capabilities, with an emphasis on reliability, grounding, and security.

US citizenship with an active Secret clearance is required; a CS or related degree and 3+ years of Python