{"id":3749265,"url":"https://alion.io/job/bigbear-ai-lead-ai-engineer","title":"Lead AI Engineer","company":{"id":34812,"name":"BigBear.ai","domain":"bigbear.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/bigbear-ai-holdings-inc","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"iCIMS","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":100,"open_postings":5,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.2,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":16,"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":".NET","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Angular","optional":false},{"name":"Anthropic","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"C#","optional":false},{"name":"Chain-of-Thought","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Claude Code","optional":false},{"name":"Copilot","optional":false},{"name":"Cursor","optional":false},{"name":"Databricks","optional":false},{"name":"Docker","optional":false},{"name":"ETL/ELT","optional":false},{"name":"FedRAMP","optional":false},{"name":"Git","optional":false},{"name":"GitLab","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"Multi-Agent Systems","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Power Automate","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-04T14:35:54Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-04","last_verified_at":"2026-11-05T10:44:25Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Overview\nBigBear.ai is looking for a Lead AI Engineer to drive the design, development, and deployment of generative AI and agentic systems for mission-critical Department of War (DoW) operations. This role combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership. You will set AI architecture direction, lead and mentor engineers, and work directly with government stakeholders to turn operational needs into production-ready AI capabilities.\nBigBear.ai is one of the fastest-growing AI/ML companies in the industry, focused on technology-driven decision support for the DoW. Our team combines subject matter expertise, user community engagement, sensitivity to operations, and world-class software engineering. Together we help government customers gain insight into complex problems, run scenarios quickly, and make sense of large and disparate datasets across the DoW.\nWhat you will do\nAs Lead AI Engineer, you will own the technical direction of AI-enabled solutions from discovery through deployment. You will work with data scientists, systems analysts, product managers, and mission users to deliver AI systems that meet the highest standards of performance, reliability, and security.\nKey Responsibilities:\n AI Architecture & Technical Leadership: Define and lead the architecture for generative AI solutions, including multi-agent workflows, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and LLM integration. Set engineering standards and best practices for building AI systems.\n Agentic Systems & MCP Development: Design, build, and deploy multi-agent orchestration and custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers that connect AI agents securely to existing enterprise and mission systems.\n LLM Integration & Optimization: Build applications against commercial and government-approved LLM endpoints (e.g., Anthropic, OpenAI, Ask Sage). Apply advanced prompt engineering, dataset routing, and confidence gating to optimize output quality and reliability.\nCustomer Discovery & Prototyping: Engage directly with government stakeholders to gather requirements, assess feasibility within time and cost constraints, and rapidly prototype solutions that prove mission value before scaling.\nFull-Stack Development: Design, develop, document, test, and debug applications using full-stack principles across front-end, back-end, API, and data layers.\nCloud & Data Pipelines: Shape and implement cloud-forward data environments and web/data pipelines that feed AI workflows, including document ingestion, classification, and knowledge-domain routing.\n AI Evaluation, Security & Assurance: Build evaluation harnesses for regression testing, citation verification, and retrieval transparency. Red-team AI systems for prompt injection and adversarial failure modes before production. Ensure solutions meet DoW security and compliance requirements (ATO, FedRAMP).\nTeam Leadership & Mentorship: Lead and mentor engineers on AI tooling, AI-first development practices, and adoption strategies. Promote collaboration through initiatives such as hackathons and knowledge sharing.\nRoadmap Influence: Feed field-discovered gaps and user feedback into product roadmaps, and work with product leadership on release planning and prioritization.\nDeployment & Monitoring: Coordinate system installations, monitor production performance, and ensure deployed AI capabilities meet specifications and mission expectations.\nWhat you should have\n Education: Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or a related field with 15 years of experience\nDemonstrated experience leading engineering teams or serving as technical lead on complex software initiatives\nHands-on experience designing and deploying generative AI or agentic AI systems in operational or production environments\nExperience with multi-agent orchestration, RAG, prompt engineering (few-shot, chain-of-thought), and LLM API integration\nProficiency in front-end and back-end development\n Experience with key technologies:\nPython, .NET / C#, Angular, TypeScript, Docker, AWS services, SQL Server, Web/Data Pipelines, Git-based CI/CD\nEquivalent technologies are acceptable, such as React (instead of Angular), Java (instead of .NET), PostgreSQL (instead of SQL Server), or Azure (instead of AWS)\nExperience delivering software in secure, regulated environments (ATO, FedRAMP, security hardening)\nProblem-solving skills: Strong analytical abilities with a focus on delivering high-quality, mission-ready solutions\n Communication: Ability to explain AI capabilities, limitations, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders\nWhat we'd like you to have\nExperience building custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers\nExperience with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot Agents)\nExperience with Helm/YAML, GitLab, Qlik, or Databricks\nExperience building AI evaluation frameworks or doing adversarial testing of LLM systems\nBackground in data warehousing, ETL, or business intelligence\nExperience integrating AI into enterprise workflow tools (e.g., Power Automate custom connectors)\nAbout BigBear.ai\nBigBear.ai is a leading provider of AI-powered decision intelligence solutions for national security, supply chain management, and digital identity. Customers and partners rely on Bigbear.ai’s predictive analytics capabilities in highly complex, distributed, mission-based operating environments. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, BigBear.ai is a public company traded on the NYSE under the symbol BBAI. For more information, visit https://bigbear.ai/ and follow BigBear.ai on LinkedIn: @BigBear.ai and X: @BigBearai.\nBigBear.ai is an Equal opportunity employer all protected groups, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5751,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Identity Management","Computer Vision","Decision Intelligence","Defense AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-04T14:35:54Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":16,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-05T05:54:30Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/bigbear-ai-lead-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/bigbear-ai-lead-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-05T12:35:42Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":16318,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-06T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":34812},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=34812"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fbigbear-ai-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fbigbear-ai-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fbigbear-ai-lead-ai-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/bigbear-ai-lead-ai-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fbigbear-ai-lead-ai-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3749265}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"bigbear.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3749265},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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