Senior Forward-Deployed AI Engineer (Defense)

Limelight Health; Springfield (VA); On-site; USD 149,000 - 201,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision

Company stock options

Home office budget

401k retirement plan

Paid parental leave

Job summary

Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed AI Engineer to embed with defense and national security customers as a technical partner, owning solutions from discovery through production deployment. The work centers on backend engineering, data pipelines, and retrieval systems that power agentic and generative AI capabilities on top of Defense Unicorns' core platform (Unified Defense Stack).

You'll deploy and operate these systems across cloud, on-prem, and air-gapped environments, then

Qualifications

• 4+ years of backend or full-stack engineering with production-grade work in Python.
• Experience designing data pipelines, APIs, and integration layers in production.
• Hands-on experience with information retrieval systems: keyword search, vector search, document parsing and chunking, reranking, or search engine internals (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, or similar).
• Working knowledge of RAG patterns or applied generative AI: connecting LLMs to real data sources in a production context.
• Experience deploying or operating software in government, defense, or similarly regulated environments (or equivalent high-assurance contexts).
• Strong communication skills: able to translate technical work into clear language for non-technical stakeholders and build trust with customers.
• Eligibility to obtain a U.S. security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Embed with strategic customers, owning the arc from problem discovery through solution delivery and customer adoption.
• Architect, build, and deploy backend systems that power generative AI capabilities: APIs, data processing pipelines, integration layers, Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), and context engineering patterns.
• Deploy and operate systems in cloud, on-prem, and air-gapped environments using Defense Unicorns' core platform and delivery patterns.
• Scope and sequence delivery: define roadmaps, set priorities, make speed/quality/scope tradeoffs, and remove blockers across internal teams and customer stakeholders.
• Codify reusable patterns for mission environments: tooling, internal frameworks, and playbooks that make future deployments faster and more repeatable.
• Serve as the technical face to customer leadership: translate complex technical work for non-technical stakeholders, build trust, and drive adoption.
• Carry field insights back to product and engineering teams to improve the platform based on what's actually breaking or missing in production.
• Prototype and validate new capabilities using core products and design patterns, feeding lessons learned back into the product.

Skills

Python

Backend engineering

Data pipelines

Retrieval systems

RAG patterns

API design

Communication

Tools

Kubernetes

OpenSearch/Elasticsearch

Terraform/Pulumi

Job description

Defense Unicorns is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed AI Engineer to embed with defense and national security customers as a technical partner, owning solutions from discovery through production deployment. The work centers on backend engineering, data pipelines, and retrieval systems that power agentic and generative AI capabilities on top of Defense Unicorns' core platform (Unified Defense Stack).

You'll deploy and operate these systems across cloud, on-prem, and air-gapped environments, then