TS/SCI w/Poly - AI/ML Data Engineer

Leading Path Consulting; Chantilly (NC); On-site; USD 150,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous starting salary with annual"s

Fully paid Medical, Dental and Vision

Generous PTO and Comp time

11 paid holidays

6% 401(k) auto contribution

Tuition and Training expense reimburse

Spot Awards cash bonus

Job summary

Leading Path Consulting seeks an Al/ML Engineer to advance multilingual machine translation for low-resource languages, train and refine models, and build robust data pipelines using AWS services. The role works closely with data scientists to ensure production readiness and scalable MLOps practices.

You will deploy containerized applications and implement CI/CD, monitor models, and explore new NLP and speech technologies for mission-driven language tasks.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering or related field.
• 10+ years of related software engineering experience.
• Experience developing software with Python.
• Experience training and optimizing ML/DL models using modern frameworks.
• Familiarity with DevOps and MLOps including CI/CD and model lifecycle management.
• Hands-on experience with AWS services (S3, EC2, IAM, VPC, SageMaker, Bedrock, Lambda).
• Experience deploying containerized apps using Docker.

Responsibilities

• Develop, fine-tune, evaluate, and optimize multilingual translation models to improve low-resource languages.
• Build, preprocess, and manage multilingual text and speech datasets for model training and evaluation.
• Design and maintain scalable data pipelines and end-to-end MLOps workflows.
• Develop and deploy cloud-native ML solutions using AWS services.
• Deploy and support ML models in production using containerized environments and CI/CD.

Skills

Python

AWS

MLOps

NLP

Transformer models

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in CS/EE or related field

Tools

SageMaker

Bedrock

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Al/ML Engineer

Multiple locations available including Warrenton, Chantilly and McLean, VA! You choose!

TS/SCI w/Poly required

The Data Engineer will work closely with the team to advance Human Language Technologies (HLT), with a focus on refining text and audio translation capabilities. This position will be responsible for establishing an environment to train custom models for the top language types currently available in our triage tool. Additionally, this role will enable the organization to develop the capacity to train low-resource languages which may emerge as future priorities. The individual in this role will work closely with Data Scientists, providing comprehensive support and ensuring seamless coverage. A professional who utilizes statistical analysis, programming skills, and machine learning techniques to collect, clean, analyze, and interpret large datasets, extracting valuable insights and creating predictive models

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Develop, fine-tune, evaluate, and optimize multilingual machine translation models (e.g., NLLB, Opus-MT, MarianMT) to improve translation quality for low-resource languages.
• Build, preprocess, and manage multilingual text and speech datasets for model training, evaluation, and continuous improvement.
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable data pipelines and end-to-end MLOps workflows for data ingestion, model training, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management.
• Develop and deploy cloud-native machine learning solutions using AWS services such as SageMaker, Step Functions, and Bedrock.
• Deploy and support machine learning models in production using containerized environments and CI/CD best practices.
• Engineer features and optimize datasets to improve machine learning model performance.
• Conduct testing, validation, benchmarking, and troubleshooting of machine learning models and data pipelines.
• Research and evaluate emerging AI, machine learning, NLP, and speech technologies for mission applications.

Requirements

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering or a related technical discipline, or the equivalent combination of education, technical training, or work/military experience

10+ years of related software engineering experience.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience developing software applications using Python.
• Experience training, fine-tuning, evaluating, and optimizing machine learning and deep learning models using modern frameworks and best practices.
• Familiarity with DevOps and MLOps principles, including CI/CD, infrastructure automation, model lifecycle management, monitoring, version control, and software delivery best practices.
• Hands-on experience with AWS cloud services and AI/ML offerings, including S3, EC2, IAM, VPC, SageMaker, Bedrock, Lambda, and related services.
• Experience developing and deploying containerized applications using Docker.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience fine-tuning transformer-based language translation models (e.g., NLLB, Opus-MT, MarianMT) and working with Hugging Face Transformers.
• Familiarity with experiment tracking, model registries, and dataset versioning tools such as MLflow, Weights & Biases, or DVC.
• Experience with distributed training frameworks such as Ray or PyTorch Distributed
• Hands-on experience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining production-grade MLOps pipelines and automated machine learning workflows supporting model training, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management using technologies such as AWS Step Functions, Apache NiFi, Apache Airflow, or similar orchestration platforms.
• Experience developing multilingual NLP, speech processing, or language translation solutions.
• Familiarity with large language models (LLMs), transformer architectures, and generative AI technologies.
• Familiarity with NLP frameworks such as spaCy, NLTK, Stanford CoreNLP, or similar libraries.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a multidisciplinary environment.
• Familiarity with audio processing frameworks such as Librosa, PyAudioAnalysis, OpenSMILE, or similar technologies.

Benefits

• Generous starting salary with annual raises
• Fully paid Medical, Dental and Vision coverage premiums for employee and all their immediate dependents
• Generous PTO and Comp time
• 11 paid holidays
• 6% 401(k) auto contribution
• Company-funded life insurance
• Tuition and Training expense reimbursementsFinancial rewards for employee referrals
• Cash bonus SPOT Awards for efforts above and beyond your role like contributing to proposals, working billable overtime, receiving customer recognition or awards, supporting BD/marketing material creation and more!