AI Engineer SME
About The Position
AnaVation is seeking a highly skilled AI Engineer to lead the research, design, development, and execution of specialized operational and analytic cyber capabilities in support of real-world missions. The role builds production-ready AI/ML/GenAI models, pipelines, and microservices; develops training, evaluation, and inference pipelines; and deploys and manages models using MLOps, CI/CD, containerization, and monitoring frameworks. The position also involves implementing vector databases, embeddings, LLM applications, agentic AI, and tool-calling workflows; optimizing models for accuracy, latency, cost, and scalability; and ensuring AI governance, documentation, ethical compliance, and secure posture alignment. The engineer provides technical mentorship and drives cross-team engineering standardization. The position requires an active Top Secret clearance, eligibility for SCI and the ability to obtain a CI polygraph. Work is on-site in Chantilly, Virginia.
Requirements
- Active Top Secret (TS) clearance, eligibility for Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), and ability to obtain a Counterintelligence (CI) polygraph.
- Bachelor's or master's degree and 10 years of experience specializing in AI/ML engineering.
- Hands-on experience deploying production AI/GenAI and LLM systems, including embeddings, multimodel and multimodal orchestration, reasoning, memory, and tool execution.
- Proficiency with PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, and a cloud platform such as AWS, Azure, or GCP; practical MLOps experience using MLflow, Azure ML, or Vertex AI.
- Experience implementing NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, temporal, spatial, geographic, or quantitative AI capabilities, including named entity recognition, contextual entity extraction, and entity resolution.
- Experience developing multi-step retrieval and structured-output workflows with source citations, provenance, and traceable analytic results.
- Expertise in data architecture integrating vector, graph, and relational databases, including automated ETL pipeline development, scheduling, optimization, complex parsing, and schema-aligned ingestion and normalization of structured and unstructured data.
- Experience implementing data-layer Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) and end-to-end data lineage tracking.
- Experience supporting air-gapped, hybrid, and on-premises environments, including locally hosted GPU servers, hyperconverged infrastructure, container orchestration, distributed systems, and multitenant Cross-Domain Solutions (CDS).
- Proficiency in full-stack application development and integration using TypeScript, React, Python, FastAPI, LanceDB, Lance Graph, PostgreSQL, Temporal.io, Docker, and Kubernetes.
- Experience delivering and maintaining solutions in agile engineering environments.
- Ability to work on-site in Chantilly, Virginia.
Nice To Haves
- Experience in federal, defense, or highly regulated environments.
- Knowledge of ethical AI, governance frameworks, and secure development practices.
- Skills in large-scale optimization, GPU acceleration, or distributed training.
- Experience building APIs, microservices, and automated ML workflows.
Responsibilities
- Build scalable, production-ready AI/ML/GenAI models, pipelines, and microservices.
- Develop training, evaluation, and inference pipelines in Python using PyTorch, TensorFlow, or scikit-learn.
- Deploy and manage models using MLOps, CI/CD, containerization, and monitoring frameworks.
- Implement vector databases, embeddings, LLM applications, agentic AI, and tool-calling workflows.
- Optimize models for accuracy, latency, cost, and scalability across distributed environments.
- Ensure AI governance, documentation, ethical compliance, and secure posture alignment.
- Provide technical mentorship and drive cross-team engineering standardization.
- Develop AI capabilities and data workflows, including retrieval and structured-output workflows with citations, provenance, and traceable analytic results.
- Integrate vector, graph, and relational databases, automated ETL pipelines, access controls, and data lineage tracking.
- Deliver and maintain solutions in agile engineering environments.
Benefits
- Generous cost sharing for medical insurance for the employee and dependents.
- 100% company-paid dental insurance for employees and dependents.
- 100% company-paid long-term and short-term disability insurance.
- 100% company-paid vision insurance for employees and dependents.
- 401(k) plan with generous match and 100% immediate vesting.
- Competitive pay.
- Generous paid leave and holiday package.
- Tuition and training reimbursement.
- Life and AD&D insurance.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
