Senior AI Engineer: Agentic Evaluation & V&V for Space Ops

Slingshot Aerospace; Colorado Springs (CO); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation assistance

Job summary

Slingshot Aerospace is seeking a Senior AI Engineer focused on agentic evaluation and validation within the AI & Data Science team in Colorado Springs. You will extend V&V SDKs, design end-to-end evaluations, and build benchmarks for autonomous mission planning systems.

You will translate mission concepts into executable evaluation configurations, collaborate across disciplines, and help ensure reliable, trustworthy AI-driven space operations.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering, machine learning engineering, or equivalent
• Strong Python engineering skills with experience building SDKs, libraries, or evaluation tooling
• Experience designing evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, metrics, or test harnesses for AI/ML systems
• Ability to analyze system behavior, identify failure modes, and evaluate performance in complex autonomous or semi-autonomous systems
• Familiarity with modern agent frameworks, orchestration patterns, or protocol-based integrations
• Experience working in cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant science or engineering field, or equivalent experience
• Must be a U.S. citizen and possess an active Top Secret / SCI (TS/SCI) clearance.

Responsibilities

• Extend and maintain Slingshot’s V&V SDK and evaluation framework for simulation-backed validation of agentic AI systems
• Design and implement agent-level and end-to-end evaluations, including benchmark scenarios, scoring logic, and experiment harnesses
• Build benchmark scenarios and tooling that measure planning, reasoning, and operational performance for autonomous mission planning systems
• Translate astrodynamics and mission-domain concepts into executable evaluation scenarios and simulation configurations
• Develop reusable SDK interfaces, adapters, and evaluation utilities that connect V&V systems, TALOS benchmarks, and agent workflows
• Define and apply metrics for capability evaluation, failure analysis, regression detection, and comparative benchmarking
• Partner with cross-functional teams to identify evaluation needs and contribute to improving coverage of critical capabilities
• Contribute to best practices for evaluating complex, autonomous AI systems
• Uphold strong engineering standards through testing, documentation, reproducibility, and maintainable system design

Skills

Python

SDKs/evaluation tooling

AI/ML systems evaluation

Cross-functional teamwork

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in a relevant science or engineering field

Tools

LangGraph

Job description

Slingshot Aerospace is seeking a Senior AI Engineer focused on agentic evaluation and validation within the AI & Data Science team in Colorado Springs. You will extend V&V SDKs, design end-to-end evaluations, and build benchmarks for autonomous mission planning systems.

You will translate mission concepts into executable evaluation configurations, collaborate across disciplines, and help ensure reliable, trustworthy AI-driven space operations.