Senior Entity Resolution Engineer

DEFCON AI, Inc.; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 195,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully remote

Equity package

Health insurance

Job summary

DEFCON AI, Inc. is seeking an experienced engineer to own the core entity matching capabilities of our AI-powered platform.

You will design and implement blocking, candidate generation, scoring, clustering, and provenance to ensure auditable, explainable decisions that support analysts and decision makers. This fully remote role requires 5+ years in production record matching, strong Python and SQL, and an active US Secret clearance.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in production record matching or entity resolution.
• Ability to explain matching tradeoffs, including false merges vs false splits.
• Strong Python and SQL skills with large, messy real-world data.
• Ability to explain a matching decision to a non-technical stakeholder.

Responsibilities

• Implement and refine entity-level record matching: blocking, candidate generation, pairwise scoring, clustering, threshold policy.
• Reuse matching engine for record linkage, deduplication, and known-entity checks.
• Establish provenance so every node and edge traces back to the source.
• Own the tradeoff decisions and make them explainable to reviewers.
• Own technical execution of the matching approach against a fixed reference dataset and thresholds with evidence.
• Document matching logic in detail for future engineers.

Skills

Python

SQL

US Secret clearance

Tools

PostgreSQL

pgvector

Job description

RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF DISRUPTION. DEFCON AI is an insights company that leverages artificial intelligence, mathematical optimization, data analytics, and software engineering for resilient optimization of complex systems.
In today’s dynamically changing world, DEFCON AI’s technology aligns outcomes with operational goals, better decision making, and empowers customers to anticipate assess, and mitigate the impacts of disruptions.

About the Role

This role sits in one of the most critical parts of the platform: determining when records from dozens of disparate sources represent the same real-world entity. Graph design and matching strategy are developed in-house, and you’ll be the engineer who turns those concepts into production-ready capability. You’ll shape implementation details, but this is first and foremost a builder role.

You’ll join a team building technology that supports real-world government mission needs. The platform ingests and analyzes data from a wide range of sources, applies AI-assisted workflows to surface what matters most, and provides transparent, explainable recommendations that analysts can trust. Every match, merge, and relationship you create helps turn fragmented information into insight.

You’ll own the matching build lifecycle end to end: blocking strategies, candidate generation, pairwise scoring, clustering, threshold policy, and the deduplication and known-entity checks that reuse the same engine. You’ll also build the provenance framework that lets every node, edge, and assertion in the graph be traced to the source that asserted it, so matching decisions are auditable and explainable.

This is a fully remote role with occasional travel to DEFCON AI headquarters, customer sites, and partner facilities as needed.

Key Responsibilities

• Implement and refine entity-level record matching: blocking, candidate generation, pairwise scoring, clustering, and threshold policy
• Reuse one matching engine for record linkage, deduplication, and known-entity checks
• Establish provenance so every node and edge traces back to the source that asserted it
• Own the false-merge versus false-split tradeoff in matching decisions and make it explainable
• Own technical execution of the matching approach against the in-house design: the fixed reference dataset, candidate retrieval and final matching evaluated separately, and threshold recommendations with evidence for review
• Document matching logic in enough detail to serve as an implementation reference for other engineers

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience, including shipping production record matching or entity resolution
• Ability to explain the matching tradeoffs you made, including how you handled false merges versus false splits
• Strong Python and SQL, with demonstrated experience on large, messy, real-world data
• Ability to explain a matching decision to a stakeholder who must defend it without understanding its internals
• Active US Secret clearance required to start

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience applying probabilistic matching to inconsistent identity data such as names, dates, addresses, and identifiers, and familiarity with the failure modes of each
• Familiarity with probabilistic record-linkage frameworks and tooling such as Fellegi-Sunter models, Splink, Dedupe, Zingg, or an in-house equivalent
• Record linkage, master data management, or identity management experience
• Graph data modeling and graph algorithms applied in production
• PostgreSQL and pgvector or comparable

What Success Looks Like

• Matching decisions that can be explained and defended to a non-technical reviewer
• A data model and matching pipeline the rest of the team can build on without redesigning it
• Provenance intact end-to-end, so every match traces to its source

What We Offer

• A fully remote, results-based environment
• Competitive salary, bonus, and equity package
• 100% employer paid, comprehensive health insurance including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family
• Unlimited PTO, with your manager’s approval
• Flexible work environment where you manage your work day
• 14 weeks of fully-paid parental leave

Salary Range:

$160,000—$195,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors.

We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer: You’ll receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in DEFCON AI’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran’s discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.