Principal AI Infrastructure Engineer (part-time)

HNTB Corporation•Arlington, VA

About The Position

At HNTB, you can create a career that is meaningful to you while building communities that matter to all of us. For more than a century, we have been delivering solutions for some of the largest, most complex infrastructure projects across the country. With our historic growth, it is an exciting time to join our team of employee-owners. This opportunity entails working alongside a team of engineers, designers, and technical experts to design, deploy, and manage AI-related infrastructure that powers client-facing applications and enterprise solutions. This position focuses on building scalable, secure, and reliable infrastructure to support the successful adoption of AI technologies across the enterprise and for our clients. The role requires hands-on experience architecting and setting up infrastructure for AI/ML applications, including model serving environments, data pipelines, and integration layers. The ideal candidate will bring expertise in cloud platforms — particularly AWS and Azure — and a strong track record of delivering enterprise-grade AI infrastructure in a consulting or client services environment. This role will collaborate closely with engineering teams, data scientists, and client stakeholders to assess infrastructure needs, define architecture standards, and implement solutions that meet performance, security, and scalability requirements. As a Principal AI Infrastructure Engineer, you will apply advanced technical methods and industry best practices to deliver robust infrastructure solutions, make architectural recommendations, and resolve complex technical challenges. It is important to stay current with the latest trends in AI infrastructure, cloud-native technologies, and MLOps practices that affect our clients at national, state, and local levels.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field and 13 years of relevant experience, or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field and 12 years of relevant experience, or In lieu of education, 17 years of relevant experience.
Proven experience designing and deploying infrastructure for AI/ML applications in client or enterprise environments.
Hands-on expertise with cloud platforms, particularly AWS and/or Azure, including services such as compute, storage, networking, and managed ML services.
Experience setting up and managing enterprise-grade application infrastructure including containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines.
Strong understanding of MLOps practices, including model deployment, monitoring, and scaling.
Ability to assess client infrastructure needs and translate them into scalable, secure, and cost-effective AI solutions.
Experience working with data pipelines, API integrations, and AI/ML frameworks.
Able to work independently with minimal supervision as well as collaboratively across cross-functional teams.
Strong communication skills — able to present complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Detail oriented, proactive, and solutions-focused mindset.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cloud Computing, or a related field.
AWS and/or Azure certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect, Azure AI Engineer, Azure Solutions Architect).
Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or Bicep.
Prior consulting or client-facing experience delivering AI infrastructure projects.
Familiarity with security and compliance standards for enterprise AI deployments.

Responsibilities

Leads service improvement initiatives and activities to increase customer satisfaction. This includes developing strategic plans, influencing virtual teams to drive execution of initiatives.
Works with IT solutions, architecture, utility, and cloud services
Acts as technical lead for enterprise data management platform implementation for CRM redesign.
Manages and creating user accounts, directory access, and server permissions.
Manages the in-house services related to the internet.
Trains and educates customers on how to use certain software and hardware as requested.
Performs development and architecture for software, database, third-party integration, internationalization and infrastructure.
Sponsors roadmap, physical of failures correlation between system hardware, firmware and software, network topology infrastructure, reliability simulation at system and network level
Contributes in the development of marketing and collateral material relating to technology services or products.
Leads business development and planning efforts, including calculation of cost, risk, and scope, and support local offices in preparation of responses to RFPs, RFIs and RFQs by providing expertise on specialized technologies and/or practices.
Provides single point of contact for technology projects and products and/or leads specific technical or functional portions of a project.
Determines scope of work and objectives; estimate project costs and prepare proposals and contracts.
Actively manages project budget, schedule, communications and documentation.
Coordinates work efforts; reviews work performed, and communicates regularly with department leadership on project progress.
Applies expert business skills and consulting methodologies to collect and analyze data to determine the applicability, functionality, and viability of new technologies.
Advocates for internal and external clients by establishing user groups and acting as a liaison between users and the technology office.
Supports the identification of internal resources and external contractors to meet project requirements.
Researches new and emerging technologies and assess feasibility applications to current and future business needs.
Analyzes business unit activities and trends and compares analyses against service standards and best practices.
Presents findings to business unit leadership and identifies and implements strategies that will address tactical and strategic goals.
Works with clients and technology office staff to identify, analyze, design, develop and implement fully integrated solutions of moderate to high complexity that support HNTB’s products, service and/or business processes.
Develops detailed documentation of business systems and user needs, including workflow, program functions, and steps required to develop or modify compute programs or systems.
Reviews use cases and other technical documents with technology office project staff to ensure business requirements are adequately reflected in technical planning.
Defines, develops and implements quality assurance practices and end user test plans.
Ensure process, conducted and documentation accurately reflects the current status of changes and outstanding issues so that business requirements reflect application features and functions.
Identifies training and development. requirements of user groups and provide support when required by designing and developing training initiatives.
Performs other duties as assigned.