TS/SCI AI Engineer & Technical Advisor (Poly)

Cornerstone Defense; Columbia (MD); On-site; USD 220,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Cornerstone Defense is seeking an SETA AI Engineer in Columbia, MD to provide technical advisory support for AI-enabled applications and workflows. You will guide teams in building practical AI solutions using large language models, agentic workflows, and orchestration frameworks while maintaining government-focused security and reliability.

The role requires hands-on experience with AI systems, strong communication skills, and the ability to translate complex concepts for government

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required, or 15 years with a Master’s in CS/Engineering/Data Science/Math.
• Experience designing, building, integrating, or evaluating AI/ML-enabled applications.
• Familiarity with LLM-based apps, RAG, prompt engineering, agentic workflows, orchestration frameworks.
• Experience with LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, CrewAI, Haystack, LlamaIndex, or similar ecosystems.
• Strong API, data handling, and system integration skills.
• Ability to assess tradeoffs and communicate them to tech and government stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication; defense, cyber, intelligence, or mission-focused experience.
• Familiarity with human-in-the-loop workflows, AI assurance, and evaluation methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Provide SETA technical advisory support to government teams on AI-enabled apps and workflows.
• Advise on LLM, RAG, prompt pipelines, agentic systems, and orchestration layers for mission suitability.
• Review architectures, model usage, and risks; deliver guidance and briefs to stakeholders.
• Evaluate AI frameworks, agent libraries, and cloud environments for mission relevance.
• Support testing, performance analysis, and workflow validation.
• Advise on latency, reliability, observability, and secure development in gov environments.
• Collaborate with platform engineers, users, and leadership to ensure mission-aligned AI solutions.
• Translate complex concepts for government audiences, including tradeoffs and risks.
• Maintain knowledge of evolving AI tools, patterns, and evaluation methods.
• Support creation of knowledge repositories and AI assurance artifacts.

Skills

LLM-based applications

RAG

Prompt engineering

Agentic workflows

Orchestration frameworks

APIs and integration

Cloud AI environments

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

Semantic Kernel

AutoGen

CrewAI

Haystack

LlamaIndex

Job description

Cornerstone Defense is seeking an SETA AI Engineer in Columbia, MD to provide technical advisory support for AI-enabled applications and workflows. You will guide teams in building practical AI solutions using large language models, agentic workflows, and orchestration frameworks while maintaining government-focused security and reliability.

The role requires hands-on experience with AI systems, strong communication skills, and the ability to translate complex concepts for government