Senior AI Engineer: End-to-End ML & LLM Solutions

Steampunk, Inc.; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Steampunk, Inc. in the United States seeks a Senior AI Developer to design, build, and optimize AI solutions across predictive, generative, and autonomous system domains.

This role covers data ingestion, model experimentation, and deployment, collaborating with product teams, LLMOps engineers, designers, and mission stakeholders. You will drive end-to-end AI capabilities, integrate models with enterprise systems, and advance guardrails and responsible AI.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, or related field.
• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with at least 2+ years focused on AI/ML, generative AI, or LLM-driven application development.
• Strong proficiency in Python and modern AI frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar.
• Demonstrated ability to design and develop production-grade AI applications, including APIs, back-end services, orchestration logic, and front-end integrations (when needed).
• Experience implementing RAG architectures, embeddings, vector stores, and context retrieval patterns.
• Familiarity with multi-agent orchestration frameworks, prompt engineering strategies, and advanced LLM interaction design.
• Strong understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), including compute, serverless services, and security fundamentals for AI workloads.
• Working knowledge of containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and CI/CD pipelines for AI-based systems.
• Experience with structured and unstructured data, document processing, and application integration with existing enterprise systems.
• Understanding of responsible AI principles including safety, fairness, privacy, and model risk mitigation.
• Strong analytical and communication skills with the ability to collaborate across engineering, design, and mission domains.
• Proven experience mentoring teammates and raising the technical bar of development teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop end‑to‑end AI solutions including LLM‑powered applications, predictive ML models, multi‑agent workflows, RAG pipelines, and specialized AI microservices.
• Implement reusable AI components, libraries, and APIs that streamline application development and accelerate delivery across programs.
• Integrate AI models with enterprise systems, APIs, data platforms, vector databases, and cloud‑native services to deliver scalable mission capabilities.
• Drive iterative experimentation, prototyping, and model improvement cycles in collaboration with Data Scientists and AI Evaluation Scientists.
• Design and implement advanced prompt strategies, context management layers, retrieval systems, and LLM orchestration logic.
• Build scalable inference services, optimize model performance, and collaborate with LLMOps to enable robust deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
• Translate user needs and mission workflows into intuitive, reliable AI‑powered features through active partnership with designers and product teams.
• Implement secure‑by‑design and trustworthy AI practices, including safety guardrails, input sanitization, content filtering, and integration of evaluation metrics.
• Contribute to internal AI frameworks, code patterns, and shared accelerators that raise delivery quality across the AI & Data Exploitation Practice.
• Mentor junior developers, conduct code reviews, and support engineering excellence across multi‑disciplinary AI delivery teams.
• Stay current with emerging AI techniques, libraries, foundation models, and agent frameworks, evaluating their applicability to client missions.

Skills

Public trust clearance

Cross-functional collaboration

Mentoring

Strong communication

Education

Bachelor’s/Master’s/Ph.D. in CS/AI/ML/SE

Tools

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Hugging Face Transformers

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Steampunk, Inc. in the United States seeks a Senior AI Developer to design, build, and optimize AI solutions across predictive, generative, and autonomous system domains.

This role covers data ingestion, model experimentation, and deployment, collaborating with product teams, LLMOps engineers, designers, and mission stakeholders. You will drive end-to-end AI capabilities, integrate models with enterprise systems, and advance guardrails and responsible AI.