AI Engineer (Supporting MDA)

Job Description

Job Description

MDR is looking for an amazingly talented AI Engineer to join our team! In this role you will get to provide technical support for the design, evaluation, and advancement of AI-enabled applications, tools, and workflows. This role is intended for a hands-on technical professional who understands how modern AI systems are built and can help develop practical solutions using large language models, agentic workflows, orchestration frameworks, and supporting software infrastructure. The right candidate is a builder at heart-someone who explores new frameworks, prototypes ideas, and continuously teaches themselves emerging techniques. Curiosity and passion matter greatly in this role. We want someone who follows the fast-moving AI ecosystem because they genuinely enjoy it, not just because the job requires it.

What You'll Be Doing:

• Provide SETA support to government teams developing or assessing AI-enabled applications and tools.
• Advise on technical approaches for AI application design, prototyping, integration, and evaluation.
• Assess solutions involving LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, tool use, agentic workflows, orchestration layers, prompt pipelines, and evaluation harnesses.
• Support the review of architectures, development approaches, model usage patterns, and technical risk areas.
• Advise on AI engineering considerations such as latency, reliability, observability, testability, guardrails, data flow, and system integration.
• Evaluate and compare modern AI frameworks, agentic libraries, and experimentation harnesses for suitability in mission use cases.
• Assist with the development of technical guidance, prototypes, engineering recommendations, and briefings for government stakeholders.
• Support test and evaluation activities for AI tools, including performance assessment, qualitative review, and workflow validation.
• Collaborate with platform engineers, product leads, mission users, and government leadership to ensure AI efforts remain technically grounded and operationally relevant.
• Stay current on rapid changes in the AI ecosystem and provide informed recommendations on emerging tools and practices.

What Required Skills You'll Bring:

• Masters degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, or related field and 12+ years of relevant experience
• Active Secret clearance required
• Experience designing, building, integrating, or evaluating AI/ML-enabled applications or software tools.
• Familiarity with modern AI application patterns, including LLM-based applications, RAG, prompt engineering, agentic systems, and AI-assisted workflows.
• Experience with software development fundamentals, APIs, data handling, and system integration.
• Ability to assess technical tradeoffs and communicate them clearly to both engineers and government stakeholders.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

What Desired Skills You'll Bring:

• Ability to obtain a TS SCI clearance required
• Experience with Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or similar languages commonly used in AI application development.
• Familiarity with vector databases, embeddings, model APIs, evaluation frameworks, and agent testing harnesses.
• Exposure to model hosting, inference pipelines, or cloud-based AI development environments.
• Understanding of secure AI development practices, data protection, and operational constraints in government settings.
• Experience supporting defense, cyber, intelligence, or mission application development.
• Familiarity with human-in-the-loop workflows, AI assurance, and evaluation methodologies.
• Working knowledge of one or more agentic or orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, CrewAI, Haystack, LlamaIndex, or similar ecosystems.

Position Requirements

• Clearance Required
  • Secret
• Position Level
  • Principal
• FT/PT
  • Full Time
• Years Related Work Experience
  • 12
• Education Level Required
  • Master's

Mission Driven Research is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability/veterans. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. If you are interested in applying for employment with Mission Driven Research and need special assistance or an accommodation to use our website, please contact us by email (View email address on ziprecruiter.com) or by phone by calling View phone number on ziprecruiter.com. When contacting us, please provide your contact information and state the nature of your accessibility issue.