Senior AI Data Platform Engineer – Vector AI & RAG

Bigbear.ai; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

BigBear.ai is seeking an AI/ML Data Engineer to architect and operate enterprise-scale AI data platforms enabling vector databases, semantic search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic AI systems. This role will establish governance foundations for production AI, including data lineage, prompt traceability, explainability, and evaluation in mission environments.

You will collaborate with Data Science, ML Engineering, Software, Cybersecurity, and Enterprise Architecture teams to

Qualifications

• Active Top Secret / SCI with Polygraph is mandatory.
• 20+ years in software engineering, data engineering, distributed systems, cloud architecture, or AI/ML platform development.
• Proven delivery of enterprise-scale AI/ML / GenAI / agentic systems.
• Track record of architecting production cloud-native data platforms supporting AI workloads.
• Experience in complex enterprises with security constraints, governance, and competing priorities.

Responsibilities

• Architect and evolve an enterprise AI data platform enabling vector search, semantic retrieval, RAG, and agentic workflows.
• Design cloud-native, distributed data systems optimized for performance, scale, security, reliability, and cost.
• Lead architectural decisions; drive reuse across organizations and eliminate duplication; implement monitoring/observability and CI/CD discipline.
• Mentor engineers and raise engineering standards (design reviews, coding standards).
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies (vector DBs, retrieval frameworks, evaluation stacks) and recommend adoption paths.
• Partner across Data Science, ML Engineering, Software, Cybersecurity, and Enterprise Architecture to translate AI requirements into production-grade capabilities.

Skills

Python

SQL

Cloud platforms

Distributed systems

Vector databases

Retrieval/RAG

MLOps

CI/CD

IaC

Observability

Communication

Education

Bachelor's in CS/Engineering/Math/Data Science

Job description

BigBear.ai is seeking an AI/ML Data Engineer to architect and operate enterprise-scale AI data platforms enabling vector databases, semantic search, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic AI systems. This role will establish governance foundations for production AI, including data lineage, prompt traceability, explainability, and evaluation in mission environments.

You will collaborate with Data Science, ML Engineering, Software, Cybersecurity, and Enterprise Architecture teams to