AI Engineer

Verdantas•Reston, MD

4d•$165,000 - $195,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Verdantas is seeking a mission-driven Mid-Level AI Engineer to support an Intelligence Community customer on mission-critical applications. The role involves ideating, prototyping, and delivering AI-enabled solutions that support national security objectives. The engineer works across the full technology stack, building and maintaining reliable, scalable, and secure applications, from backend services and REST APIs to modern front-end interfaces. The position sits at the intersection of generative AI, agentic systems, and full-stack software engineering and requires collaboration with customers, product owners, and other stakeholders. This is a hybrid position requiring on-site presence 2–3 days per week.

Requirements

9 years of relevant experience in computer science, data science, software engineering, or a highly related field with similar scope and responsibilities.
A bachelor’s degree may be substituted for 4 years of experience, and a master’s degree may be substituted for 6 years of experience.
Active TS/SCI clearance with CI Polygraph.
Strong proficiency with at least one generative AI framework, such as LangChain, Haystack by Deepset, or LlamaIndex.
Strong proficiency in prompt engineering and prompt management.
Experience developing agentic AI solutions, including MCP, tool development, context engineering, and agent-to-agent (A2A) communication.
Strong proficiency in React.js and TypeScript, including functional components, hooks, reusable component design, and API integration.
Strong experience developing backend services and REST APIs using Node.js or Python.
Proficiency with PostgreSQL, including relational data modeling, SQL, schema migrations, indexing, and query optimization.
Hands-on Docker experience, including writing Dockerfiles, building images, and troubleshooting containers.
Strong communication skills and the ability to translate business and customer needs into clear technical requirements.

Nice To Haves

Experience with AWS products.
Experience with AI observability platforms such as Langfuse and LangSmith.
Experience developing with agentic AI coding harnesses such as Codex.
Experience with Next.js AI SDK and FastMCP.
Familiarity with software development within the Department of War.
Familiarity with Linux environments and Kubernetes concepts.
Experience improving application security, accessibility, performance, and reliability.
Experience working in an Agile development environment and coordinating with product, operations, and security teams.

Responsibilities

Ideate, prototype, and deliver AI-enabled solutions aligned with stakeholders and existing application environments.
Design, develop, and maintain full-stack applications using Next.js, TypeScript, FastAPI, Python, PostgreSQL, and OpenSearch.
Use Pydantic for Python data validation and Zod for TypeScript data validation.
Build and maintain Docker images and deploy, configure, and troubleshoot applications in OpenShift.
Investigate and resolve production issues across the user interface, backend services, database, and application deployment.
Work with customers, product owners, and other stakeholders to clarify requirements, identify dependencies, and estimate implementation effort.
Participate in technical design and code reviews, write automated tests, and maintain technical documentation.