Senior AI/ML Engineer for NLP/LLM in Federal Surveys

Ignite IT; Suitland (MD); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k)

401(k) matching

Dental insurance

Flexible spending account

Health insurance

Life insurance

Paid time off

Professional development assistance

Referral program

Tuition reimbursement

Vision insurance

Job summary

Ignite IT Hub is seeking a senior AI/ML Engineer to maintain and enhance the U.S. Census Bureau's LLM Autocoder, which assigns standardized codes to survey write-in responses.

You will build and test model and software improvements for the ACS, develop pilots for additional surveys, and collaborate with data scientists and MLOps engineers to deploy changes in production. You will develop Python components for text preprocessing, model invocation, prompt management, and structured output

Qualifications

• 8+ years in software or ML engineering, including 3+ years building NLP/ML apps.
• Strong Python development, data processing, APIs, automated testing, and Git.
• Experience deploying or supporting applications in AWS and collaborating with data scientists/ops teams.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain Python components for text preprocessing, model invocation, prompt management, and structured output validation.
• Implement changes to prompts, model configuration, dictionaries, and supporting code in small increments.
• Build pilots using LLMs, fuzzy matching, direct-match dictionaries, or hybrid approaches for surveys.
• Write unit/integration/regression/edge-case tests and compare results to approved baselines.
• Reproduce production issues and implement verified corrections.
• Partner with MLOps on packaging, deployment, rollback, and post-release verification in AWS environments.
• Participate in code reviews and SME sessions; maintain documentation and reproducible examples for Census handoff.

Skills

NLP/ML apps

Python development

Data processing & APIs

Automated testing

Git & maintainable design

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

AWS

Git

PyTorch

Hugging Face

Scikit-learn

Job description

Ignite IT Hub is seeking a senior AI/ML Engineer to maintain and enhance the U.S. Census Bureau's LLM Autocoder, which assigns standardized codes to survey write-in responses.

You will build and test model and software improvements for the ACS, develop pilots for additional surveys, and collaborate with data scientists and MLOps engineers to deploy changes in production. You will develop Python components for text preprocessing, model invocation, prompt management, and structured output