Principal Cognitive Systems Engineer IV

Bct•Annapolis Junction, MD

About The Position

A career at BCT LLC means being part of something bigger than yourself. Our success comes from the dedication of our people and their commitment to delivering meaningful solutions for our customers and their missions. If you�re looking for a supportive, team-oriented workplace where collaboration and shared success matter, we invite you to explore a career with BCT LLC. BCT LLC is seeking a Principal Cognitive Systems Engineer IV to lead the architectural design, development, and deployment of the NerveCenter platform. This senior technical role bridges the gap between human cognitive processes and advanced artificial intelligence, ensuring that NerveCenter functions as a highly intuitive, adaptive, and scalable mission-enabling system. The Level IV Engineer will serve as the primary technical authority on cognitive architectures, directing a multidisciplinary team to integrate Large Language Models (LLMs), deep learning frameworks, and stateful multi-agent systems into secure, ITAR-compliant enterprise environments.

Requirements

10+ years of applied experience in systems engineering, artificial intelligence, or machine learning, with at least 3 years leading enterprise-scale AI.
Expert level proficiency in Python
Strong capability in Java, Go, or C++
Deep expertise with PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, and advanced vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Milvus, Azure AI Search).
Proven experience deploying AI models in highly secure cloud environments, specifically Google Cloud Platform (Vertex AI / Assured Workloads) or Microsoft Azure Government (GCC High).
Demonstrated capability in translating human decision-making processes into computational models, including reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) and semantic mapping.

Responsibilities

Cognitive Architecture Design: Architect and implement the core cognitive models powering NerveCenter, focusing on human-machine teaming, natural language understanding, and automated reasoning capabilities.
Multi-Agent Orchestration: Design protocols for multi-agent workflows, enabling specialized AI agents within NerveCenter to securely share context, execute complex multi-step plans, and interact with internal enterprise APIs and data stores.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Optimization: Lead the development of advanced RAG pipelines, ensuring the system accurately grounds outputs in verified enterprise data while navigating complex access control lists (ACLs) and zero-trust security boundaries.
Systems Integration: Seamlessly embed cognitive capabilities into existing government and defense architectures, prioritizing high-speed, multi-turn stateful interactions.
Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for cognitive systems across BCT, providing strategic technical direction to Level I-III engineers, data scientists, and cloud architects.
Performance & Safety Tuning: Establish rigorous testing frameworks to monitor model latency, token consumption, hallucination rates, and prompt-injection vulnerabilities, ensuring continuous optimization of the NerveCenter platform.