Lead AI/ML Software Engineer

Role Description

As Lead AI/ML Software Engineer for [R]AIMS, you will serve as a senior technical leader responsible for evolving the architecture, execution, and engineering rigor of Raft’s AI Mission System. You will be hands-on in the codebase, leading by doing, while also setting technical direction and raising the quality of engineering across the team.

• Drive architectural decisions across the [R]AIMS platform, evaluating tradeoffs across performance, scalability, security, and maintainability.
• Lead major technical epics from conception through delivery, decomposing ambiguous problems into executable plans.
• Simplify and rationalize distributed system architecture as the platform scales.
• Optimize platform performance across both edge and cloud deployment targets.
• Establish strong engineering foundations and reusable technical patterns.
• Mentor engineers at multiple levels, conducting design reviews and providing substantive code feedback.
• Partner with AI/ML engineers on model integration and operational deployment of agentic workflows.
• Engage directly with customers and program stakeholders across the Department of Defense.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of hands-on experience building and shipping production software systems across the full stack (frontend, backend, infrastructure, and ML).
• Deep software engineering fundamentals with demonstrated ability to design, build, and evolve complex systems.
• Exceptional technical communication skills; able to lead through influence across engineering, product, and leadership stakeholders.
• Proven experience designing and evolving distributed systems, including service decomposition and fault tolerance.
• Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes and cloud-native platform architecture in production environments.
• Experience building data-intensive or AI-enabled production systems with real operational users.
• Demonstrated technical leadership over large, cross-functional engineering initiatives.
• Strong system design and architecture decision-making ability.
• Some experience or exposure to training, fine-tuning, or deploying machine learning models in production contexts.
• Ability to obtain Security+ certification within the first 90 days of employment.
• US citizenship required; ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI clearance.

Requirements

• Experience building AI/ML infrastructure or agentic systems.
• Experience with streaming and event-driven architectures, particularly Kafka.
• Experience with platform engineering and internal developer tooling.
• Experience with real-time inference or operational AI systems in latency-sensitive environments.
• Experience building secure, compliant systems for regulated or mission-critical environments.
• Prior work in defense, national security, or classified program environments.
• Active clearance preferred.

Benefits

• Highly competitive salary.
• Fully covered healthcare, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) and company match.
• Take as you need PTO + 11 paid holidays.
• Education & training benefits.
• Generous Referral Bonuses.
• And More!