Staff Applied ML Engineer, Federal/National Security

Red Cell Partners; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Career track

Full health coverage

Maternity/Paternity leave

Unlimited PTO

Professional development

401K & equity options

Mental health benefits

GLP-1 solutions access

Job summary

Red Cell Federal is recruiting a Staff Applied ML Engineer to build and deploy production AI systems for federal and national security missions. You’ll work across LLMs, model fine-tuning and adaptation, agentic systems, RAG, evaluation, and inference to deliver reliable software for real mission environments.

This role emphasizes practical deployment, collaboration with engineers and customers, and operating across cloud, on-premise, and edge environments.

Qualifications

• Significant experience building ML or AI systems and deploying in production.
• Hands-on experience with modern LLMs and foundation models.
• Deep expertise in RAG and retrieval systems, agentic systems, embeddings, synthetic data, and AI reliability.

Responsibilities

• Build productionLLM-powered applications, AI agents, and agentic workflows.
• Develop and own model evaluation, fine-tuning, adaptation, and experimentation pipelines.
• Determine when to use prompting, RAG, fine-tuning, specialized models, or combinations of these approaches.
• Build rigorous eval systems for model and agent quality, reliability, tool use, and task completion.
• Develop retrieval and context systems across structured and unstructured mission data.
• Optimize models and inference for production environments.
• Deploy and improve models based on real-world performance and user feedback.
• Partner with FDEs and customers to translate mission requirements into production AI capabilities.
• Turn solutions developed for individual deployments into reusable platform capabilities.

Skills

Production ML systems

LLMs / foundation models

RAG retrieval systems

Agentic systems

Embeddings & knowledge retrieval

Synthetic data

AI reliability / guardrails

ML experimentation to production

Customer collaboration

Job description

Staff Applied ML Engineer, Federal/National Security

Remote (USA), Washington D.C. Area Preferred

About Us

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation’s most pressing problems.

About the Role

Red Cell Federal is hiring a Staff Applied ML Engineer to build and deploy production AI systems for federal and national security missions.

You’ll work across LLMs, model fine-tuning and adaptation, agentic systems, RAG, evaluation, and inference, helping turn rapidly evolving AI capabilities into reliable software that operates in real mission environments.

This isn't a pure research role, and it isn't an ML infrastructure role removed from users. You’ll work alongside Forward Deployed and Software Engineers, occasionally directly with customers, to understand operational problems and determine how models, data, agents, and software can solve them.

Red Cell Federal's platform is being designed to support interchangeable models, including specialized smaller models for edge use cases, and to operate across cloud, on-premise, and edge environments.

What You'll Do

• Build productionLLM-powered applications, AI agents, and agentic workflows
• Develop and own model evaluation, fine-tuning, adaptation, and experimentation pipelines
• Determine when to use prompting, RAG, fine-tuning, specialized models, or combinations of these approaches
• Build rigorous eval systems for model and agent quality, reliability, tool use, and task completion
• Develop retrieval and context systems across structured and unstructured mission data
• Optimize models and inference for production environments
• Deploy and improve models based on real-world performance and user feedback
• Partner with FDEs and customers to translate mission requirements into production AI capabilities
• Turn solutions developed for individual deployments into reusable platform capabilities

What We're Looking For

• Significant experience building ML or AI systems and deploying in production
• Hands-on experience with modern LLMs and foundation models
• Deep expertise in several of the following:
• RAG and retrieval systems
• Agentic systems and tool use
• Embeddings and knowledge retrieval
• Synthetic data
• Guardrails and AI reliability
• Ability to move comfortably between ML experimentation and production engineering
• Ability to operate independently against ambiguous technical problems
• Interest in working close to users and seeing how AI performs against real operational workflows

Why This Role

The challenge here isn't proving that an LLM can perform a task. It's figuring out how to make AI reliable enough to use in production, measurable enough to know when it fails, adaptable enough to improve quickly, and practical enough to operate within real national security environments.

Red Cell Federal is focused on that "agentic last mile": operationalizing and deploying AI against mission requirements rather than stopping at decision support or prototypes.

If you want to work deeply on the models and stay close enough to the problem to see whether what you built actually works, let's talk!

Clearance / Eligibility

Because this role supports federal and national-security customers, U.S. citizenship is required with an Active Secret or Top-Secret Security Clearance.

Location

Washington, DC / Northern Virginia preferred. This role may require regular customer-facing work, including onsite meetings, secure-facility work, or travel depending on program needs.

Salary Range: $180,000-240,000 + bonus + equity. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors.

#LI-RCP

Our Red Cell Partners Benefits (may differ for each incubation):

For full-time roles

• Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement withstrong performanceas the firm grows
• 100% employer paid, comprehensive health care including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family.
• Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees' normal pay.
• Unlimited PTO, with management approval.
• Opportunities for professional development and continued learning.
• Optional 401K, FSA, and equity incentives available.
• Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind .
• Cost effective GLP-1 solutions available through Crux .

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 aconfidential file.

As set forth in Red Cell Partners’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 measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis 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.