AI Solutions Engineer

The Aerospace Corporation • El Segundo, CA

3d • $166,400 - $249,600 • Onsite

About The Position

The Digital Innovation Division is seeking Senior Project Engineers to serve as technical project leads for initiatives in The Aerospace Corporation’s corporate AI portfolio. Each lead owns an initiative end to end, including its technical approach, requirements, architecture, cost, schedule, and working relationships with engineers and subject matter experts. More than one position may be filled, and assignment will be determined during hiring based on the candidate’s background. Current and planned initiatives include an agentic platform providing secure, controlled access to expert tools, databases, physics models, and document collections; enterprise agentic AI; AI for software engineering; and modeling, simulation, and digital engineering tooling.

This is a technical leadership role, not a people-management role. The project lead directs a cross-corporate team without necessarily having formal authority over its members, owns technical decisions, and stays close to the work to assess its quality. The role is full-time and 100% onsite in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Chantilly, Virginia; or El Segundo, California. Travel of approximately 25% is required. The position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance; U.S. citizenship is required to obtain one.

The grade-based annual pay range is $166,400 to $249,600. The company describes its compensation as performance-based, with individual salary decisions depending on factors including education, experience, knowledge, and skills.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Data Science, Statistics, Information Systems, Operations, Aerospace Engineering, Physics, STEM, or a related technical field, or equivalent work experience.
• At least 8 years of progressive technical experience in AI/ML engineering, software or systems engineering, modeling and simulation, or a comparable engineering discipline, including delivery of working capabilities to real users.
• Demonstrated experience leading a technical project or team, with accountability for technical approach, cost, and schedule without relying on formal reporting authority over the team.
• Working proficiency in Python and practical experience building with modern AI/ML tooling, such as large language model APIs, agent orchestration frameworks, retrieval augmented generation, evaluation harnesses, classical ML, or simulation frameworks.
• Ability to reason about system design and make defensible architecture decisions, including data flow, integration with existing tools and databases, and tradeoffs between speed of development and sustainability.
• Working understanding of Azure, AWS, or GCP cloud platforms and how capabilities move from prototype to supported production environments.
• Demonstrated ability to work directly with subject matter experts or customers to elicit requirements and translate domain expertise into technical requirements.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to brief technical status and risk clearly to leadership without overstating progress.
• Willingness to travel approximately 25% to support customer meetings and technical collaboration.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance; U.S. citizenship is required to obtain a clearance.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree in a STEM or other technical discipline.
• 12 or more years of technical experience, including leading multi-person technical projects through delivery.
• Direct mission experience in the national space domain, missile defense, or remote sensing.
• Experience building agentic AI systems that call tools, query databases, or drive physics models, including evaluation to establish reliability.
• Experience deploying AI capabilities that engineers adopted and continued using, with evidence of sustained use rather than a successful demonstration.
• Depth in component engineering, modeling and simulation, verification and validation, or spectral phenomenology.
• Experience with agentic coding assistants or developer productivity tooling at organizational scale.
• Experience delivering capabilities on accredited networks or working within authorization to operate and continuous monitoring processes.
• Experience establishing evaluation criteria or acceptance gates for AI capabilities, including determining when a capability is not ready to field.
• Experience standing up a capability in its earliest phase, before requirements, funding, or customer scope were fully defined.
• Current DoD TS and SSBI/SCI clearance.

Responsibilities

• Serve as technical project lead for an assigned AI initiative, owning its technical approach, requirements, architecture, roadmap, and technical dependencies.
• Lead the project team day to day, including engineers, subject matter experts, and partner organizations who do not report to the lead, and set the technical direction.
• Own cost and schedule performance, including estimates, milestone commitments, variance, and supporting funding requests.
• Break loosely defined capability goals into scoped, usable increments and sequence delivery so value arrives before the full vision is complete.
• Define and measure success using evaluation criteria, acceptance tests, and performance thresholds.
• Identify, track, and retire technical risks, and escalate unresolved project-level disconnects.
• Work with subject matter experts to understand how expert work is performed and translate it into tools, data, and agent behavior that engineers can trust and use.
• Partner with platform, data, security, and accreditation teams to field capabilities in relevant environments, including accredited networks.
• Represent the initiative in technical reviews, program management reviews, and stakeholder forums, and communicate status and delays candidly.
• Document and maintain the technical baseline.
• Mentor project engineers and grow AI delivery skills across the team.

Benefits

• Comprehensive health care and wellness plans.
• Paid holidays, sick time, and vacation.
• Standard and alternate work schedules, including telework options.
• 401(k) plan with total company-paid benefit of 8%, 10%, or 12% of eligible compensation based on years of service, plus matching contributions; employees are immediately eligible and vested upon hire.
• Flexible spending accounts.
• Variable pay program for exceptional contributions.
• Relocation assistance.
• Professional growth and development programs.
• Education assistance programs.
• Inclusive work environment built on teamwork, flexibility, and respect.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior