Senior Principal AI Data Engineer — TS/SCI Onsite in VA

General Dynamics Information Technology; Virginia (MN); On-site; USD 174,000 - 236,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401K with company match

Paid time off

Healthcare options

Job summary

IronEagleX seeks a Senior Principal AI Data Engineer to design, build, and operate data pipelines for AI/ML workloads in Crystal City, VA. You will create model-ready datasets, storage layers, and low-latency retrieval for inference and RAG.

You will collaborate with software, analytics, and product teams, leverage Apache Airflow, and ensure robust, scalable pipelines in a government-focused environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of related experience.
• Current TS/SCI clearance with willingness to obtain CI polygraph.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and implement scalable data pipelines and ETL processes using Apache Airflow for AI data.
• Build and tune search and retrieval capabilities using ElasticSearch/OpenSearch, including indexing strategies and relevance optimization.
• Enable low-latency retrieval for AI inference and RAG applications by optimizing data access patterns and caching.
• Collaborate with analytics teams to define requirements, schemas, and interfaces for downstream consumption.
• Use Git for version control, code reviews, CI/CD, and reproducible deployments.
• Operate within Linux environments and perform performance tuning across pipelines and storage.

Skills

Apache Airflow

Database Optimization

ETL

Git

SQL

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field

Tools

ElasticSearch/OpenSearch

MinIO

Job description

IronEagleX seeks a Senior Principal AI Data Engineer to design, build, and operate data pipelines for AI/ML workloads in Crystal City, VA. You will create model-ready datasets, storage layers, and low-latency retrieval for inference and RAG.

You will collaborate with software, analytics, and product teams, leverage Apache Airflow, and ensure robust, scalable pipelines in a government-focused environment.