Senior AI Engineer – Production LLMs & RAG

Akina Inc; Annapolis (MD); On-site; USD 232,000 - 283,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

24 days PTO accrued annually

11 federal holidays

401k 10% company contribution

Healthcare costs covered for employee

Educational assistance

Job summary

Akina is seeking a Senior Applied AI Engineer – Software Engineering to join a fast-moving Tactical AI team. You will design and develop AI-powered applications that help analysts interact with mission data using natural language and automation.

You will collaborate with mission customers to prototype rapidly and transition capabilities into production. The role emphasizes practical AI, scalable systems, and mentoring junior engineers while shaping technical direction across the team.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and developing distributed or backend software systems.
• Experience building AI-enabled applications using LLMs, RAG, AI agents, or similar technologies.
• Experience developing REST APIs and integrating multiple data sources.
• Experience working with SQL, Elasticsearch, or other data storage technologies.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain production AI-enabled software applications using Python and modern software engineering practices.
• Architect and implement LLM-powered workflows, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, and AI agent capabilities that solve mission problems.
• Develop backend services, APIs, and data pipelines supporting AI-enabled applications.
• Translate natural language user requests into deterministic analytical workflows through integration with mission data sources, databases, and search platforms.
• Collaborate directly with mission stakeholders to understand operational workflows and rapidly prototype customer-focused AI solutions.
• Integrate structured and unstructured data from multiple sources into scalable AI applications.
• Evaluate emerging AI frameworks, models, and software engineering techniques for mission applicability.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to technical architecture, engineering standards, and software design across the team.

Skills

Distributed backend systems

LLM AI development

REST APIs

SQL/Elasticsearch data stores

Software architecture

Stakeholder communication

Mission customer collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in a technical discipline

4 additional yrs of experience in place of BS

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

React/TypeScript

LangChain

LlamaIndex

PydanticAI

Job description

Akina is seeking a Senior Applied AI Engineer – Software Engineering to join a fast-moving Tactical AI team. You will design and develop AI-powered applications that help analysts interact with mission data using natural language and automation.

You will collaborate with mission customers to prototype rapidly and transition capabilities into production. The role emphasizes practical AI, scalable systems, and mentoring junior engineers while shaping technical direction across the team.