Lead Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engineer

Description

The role is a Lead AI Engineer position within the Program Management Office, reporting to the Solution Architect, covering a portfolio of six completion-based task orders under a software-development IDIQ.

The company is a large technology and services firm serving US government, defense and intelligence customers, with about 26,000 staff and operations in more than 50 countries.

The work supports a national intelligence program. Required clearance is Top Secret SCI with polygraph, which must be held currently. Clearance type for the job family is Data Science and Data Engineering.

The role is the technical AI lead across the portfolio, pushing AI and machine learning adoption across multiple task orders and helping the team use open-weight or open-source models to cut token consumption.

The ideal candidate pairs deep AI/ML engineering skill with systems thinking, software delivery experience, and the ability to influence stakeholders in a complex program.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain an AI and ML strategy for the six task order portfolio that fits enterprise architecture and program goals.
• Review current systems to find where AI can improve performance, lower cost, or save effort.
• Consolidate overlapping tools and solutions across task orders, promoting reuse, shared services, and common AI approaches.
• Design, build, integrate, and deploy AI solutions such as predictive analytics, NLP, recommendation engines, and intelligent automation into new and existing applications.
• Use GDIT enterprise accelerators (ALAMO, Coral, and SDAF) to prototype and put AI capabilities into operation across the portfolio.
• Work with corporate reach-back and central accelerator teams to adopt, configure, and improve ALAMO, Coral, and SDAF in program solutions.
• Partner with task order technical leads on use cases, data needs, model choice, training pipelines, and MLOps.
• Set and enforce standards for the full model lifecycle: experimentation, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, retraining, and retirement.
• Make sure AI solutions are secure, auditable, explainable, and meet applicable regulations and customer policies.
• Introduce modern engineering practices such as MLOps, DevSecOps, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, and observability.
• Run proof-of-concept and rapid prototyping work to test new AI capabilities before scaling them.
• Monitor AI trends and tools and judge how they apply to the program.
• Define metrics and KPIs that show how AI initiatives affect mission results, user experience, and efficiency.
• Plan and lead the move of legacy systems and workflows to cloud-native and AI-enabled architectures.
• Assess legacy applications and data sources technically and architecturally to guide migration and modernization.
• Work with PMO and task order leadership to sequence transitions and limit risk to operations.
• Support the PMO and Solution Architect in estimating AI work, defining scope, and planning cost-effective delivery.
• Identify and reduce technical risks that affect schedule and performance across completion-based task orders.
• Give PMO leadership and customer stakeholders regular status updates, technical roadmaps, and decision support.
• Keep AI initiatives aligned with contract requirements, performance objectives, and quality standards.
• Work with task order leads, software, data, and UX engineers, and business analysts to fit AI into end-to-end solutions.
• Engage customer stakeholders to refine requirements, demonstrate AI capabilities, and support adoption and change management.
• Mentor engineering teams on AI/ML concepts, tools, and practices to build internal AI capability.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Data Science, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least 5 years of professional experience in software engineering, AI/ML engineering, or both.
• Proven record of designing, building, and deploying AI/ML solutions in production.
• Hands-on use of common AI/ML frameworks and tools such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, Transformers, spaCy, and Hugging Face.
• Strong skill in at least one modern programming language, such as Python, Java, or C.
• Experience with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or GCP and with data pipelines for AI/ML workloads.
• Experience working across multiple projects or a portfolio, such as IDIQ, multi-task-order, or large-scale programs.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps and CI/CD tools such as GitLab, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, containers, and Kubernetes.
• Experience moving legacy applications or data systems to modern architectures.
• Clear communication of complex AI concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to balance innovation with delivery discipline against cost, schedule, and performance goals.
• Preferred: Master's or PhD in a relevant technical field.
• Preferred: Experience supporting government or regulated industry customers under IDIQ or similar vehicles.
• Preferred: Background in MLOps and observability for AI systems, including model monitoring, drift detection, logging, and metrics.
• Preferred: Experience with data governance, responsible AI, and explainable AI (XAI) practices.
• Preferred: Familiarity with enterprise architecture frameworks and portfolio management.
• Preferred: Experience leading or mentoring AI/ML teams across several projects.
• Must have 5+ years of related experience. US citizenship is required.

Conditions

Onsite role in Chantilly, Virginia, with 40 scheduled hours per week and no required travel.

The likely salary range is $186,542 to $252,380. Final pay depends on experience, geographic location, and possibly contract requirements, and may fall outside this range. It is not a guaranteed amount.

Equal opportunity employer that welcomes individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.

Benefits

• US-based employees receive medical plans (some with Health Savings Accounts), dental and vision plans, and a 401(k) with pre- and post-tax contributions up to IRS limits and a company match.
• Full flex work weeks where possible, plus vacation, sick and personal time, holidays, paid parental, military, bereavement, and jury duty leave.
• Short and long-term disability, life, accidental death and dismemberment, personal accident, critical illness, and business travel and accident insurance are provided or available.