AI Platform Engineer

Software Guidance & Assistance, Inc., (SGA), is searching for an AI Platform Engineer for a CONTRACT assignment with one of our premier Regulatory clients in DMV (Rockville or Tysons). Hybrid - 3x a week on-site Overview Builds platforms, tooling, and automation that augments our SDLC - production services, CI/CD integrations, testing infrastructure, and observability - increasingly augmented by AI agents and LLMs. We're looking for a strong full-stack engineer first, who is also fluent with modern AI tooling. What We're Looking For You are a strong full-stack engineer who ships end-to-end - design, tests, CI/CD pipeline, deploy, and production monitoring - and treats every stage as first-class craft rather than overhead. You have clear technical taste, articulate trade-offs well, and know when to reach for an AI agent versus a simpler tool. You use modern AI development tools fluently in your daily workflow and have a grounded point of view on where they help and where they don't. You iterate based on real usage data and telemetry, not intuition alone. Key Responsibilities Platforms & Tooling Builds and operates CI/CD pipelines and integrations Build "Golden Path" scaffolding with standards, security, and quality gates built in Build & Maintain a governed catalog (Agents, MCPs, Skills) with behavior, permission, and access controls Build AI agents, LLM-powered tooling, and the frameworks and SDKs that accelerate them Build integrations that give humans and AI agents deep context on our systems Quality, Testing & Reliability Own testing strategy across the platform: unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end Apply mutation, property-based, or fuzz testing where it pays off Define SLOs for platform services and AI tooling Observability & Performance Analytics Design metrics, logs, traces, and dashboards for productivity, adoption, and service health Build alerting and anomaly detection to catch regressions early Analyze telemetry to guide investment decisions Collaboration & Impact Partner across teams to drive adoption of platform tooling and AI-augmented workflows Stay current with LLM and platform-engineering trends and coach colleagues on where they apply Rapidly prototype solutions to validate use cases Communicate insights to stakeholders Required Qualifications 5-7+ years building and operating production software systems Full-stack proficiency across Java, Python, and TypeScript/JavaScript, with frameworks like Spring Boot and Angular Deep CI/CD experience - Jenkins, GitLab, or equivalent; comfortable with IaC Testing discipline - TDD, test pyramid design, integration and contract testing AWS fundamentals - ECS, EC2, Fargate, Lambda, API Gateway Observability - metrics, logs, traces; CloudWatch or Splunk Daily use of AI coding tools - Claude Code, Kiro, Codex, or equivalent, with a clear point of view on their limits Nice to Have: Building internal developer platforms, SDKs, or CLIs at scale LLM orchestration in production - MCP servers, agents, tool calling Advanced testing (mutation, property-based) or driving platform adoption across teams SGA is a technology and resource solutions provider driven to stand out. We are a women-owned business. Our mission: to solve big IT problems with a more personal, boutique approach. Each year, we match consultants like you to more than 1,000 engagements. When we say let's work better together, we mean it. You'll join a diverse team built on these core values: customer service, employee development, and quality and integrity in everything we do. Be yourself, love what you do and find your passion at work. Please find us at . SGA is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of Race, Color, Sex, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Religion, National Origin, Disability, Veteran Status, Age, Marital Status, Pregnancy, Genetic Information, or Other Legally Protected Status. We are committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, and our services, programs, and activities. Please visit our company to request an accommodation or assistance regarding our policy.