AI Engineer SME

Description of Task to be Performed:

AnaVation is seeking a highly skilled AI Engineer to join our high-performing team and lead the research, design, development, and execution of specialized operational and analytic cyber capabilities in support of real-world missions.

Key Responsibilities Include:

• 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 with 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.

This position requires an active Top Secret (TS) clearance and the ability to obtain SCI access with a CI polygraph. This position is on-site in Chantilly, VA.

Required Qualifications:

• Active Top Secret (TS) clearance with eligibility for Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) and ability to obtain a Counterintelligence (CI) Polygraph.
• Bachelor's degree or master's degree with 10 years of experience specializing in AI/ML engineering
• Hands-on experience deploying production AI/GenAI and LLM systems, including embeddings, multi-model and multimodal orchestration, reasoning, memory, and tool execution.
• Proficiency with PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), with 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 to connect user interfaces, backend services, middleware, retrieval systems, databases, and AI/GenAI services.
• Experience delivering and maintaining solutions in agile engineering environments.
• Requires an active Top Secret (TS) clearance and the ability to obtain SCI access with a CI polygraph.
• Requires the ability to work on-site in Chantilly, VA.

Preferred Qualifications:

• 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.