Senior AI Platform & Applications Engineer

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Engineering and/or related field or equivalent relevant experience, plus 8 years of related experience; or Master's degree plus 6 years of related experience. Certified application developer indicating an advanced or expert degree of application development knowledge is strongly preferred.

Due to the nature of work performed within our facilities, U.S. citizenship is required.

Responsibilities for this Position

Turn the Enterprise Growth AI Platform vision into a secure, reliable enterprise capability. You will partner with Growth community subject-matter experts to develop prototypes and refine selected concepts into enterprise-scale applications. You will shape the technical roadmap, work with designated architects to define solutions that align with enterprise architecture, build and operate the shared platform, and guide safe deployment. This is a hands-on individual-contributor role for someone who can move from strategy to production code and communicate clearly with engineers, business partners, and senior executives.

Workplace:

Hybrid position based in Chantilly, Virginia. Regular onsite presence is required at least two days per week to support close collaboration with the Growth Systems & Analytics team and business stakeholders. Additional onsite presence may be required based on business, project, or customer needs.

Responsibilities for this Position

What You'll Own:

• Platform strategy and delivery. Translate the Growth Platform vision into a sequenced roadmap, investment options, measurable outcomes, and delivery plans, working with designated enterprise and solution architects to define the target architecture.
• Community prototyping and maturation. Work with Growth subject-matter experts to clarify business problems, develop and evaluate prototypes, and refine selected concepts into secure, supportable, enterprise-scale applications.
• AI-Driven Platform and application development. Build, test, deploy, document, and improve shared Python services, APIs, data and AI capabilities, developer tooling, and selected enterprise applications.
• Safe application onboarding. Assess applications developed by others against architectural patterns defined with architects and requirements for integration, dependencies, identity, security, data, reliability, observability, and support readiness before deployment.
• Platform operations. Monitor health, troubleshoot incidents, maintain operational procedures, manage technical debt and lifecycle needs, and improve the platform as demand grows.
• Technical standards and enablement. Create reusable patterns, reference implementations, automated delivery controls, and guidance that help other developers build and integrate applications effectively.
• Technical influence and storytelling. Explain choices, tradeoffs, risks, value, and progress in a way that enables decisions across technical, business, and executive audiences.

What You Won't Own:

• Every prototype-to-production effort. The Growth community originates ideas, subject-matter experts remain essential through discovery and validation, and multiple team members continue to develop and mature applications that will live on the Growth Platform.
• Enterprise architecture ownership. You will contribute platform and application expertise and work with designated architects; architecture governance, standards ownership, and formal architectural approval remain with those roles.
• The primary relationship with Enterprise AI, IT, cybersecurity, or other enterprise organizations. You will provide technical analysis, support & recommendations as the technical lead; the Manager, Growth Systems & Analytics remains the primary interface.
• Unilateral deployment approval. You will make technical-readiness recommendations within the team's governance and prioritization process.

What Makes This Role Different:

• You will help determine what the platform should become and turn that vision into measurable capability.
• You will work across strategy, prototyping, architecture collaboration, development, deployment, operations, and continuous improvement - not just implementation.
• You will build selected applications directly while making the shared platform safer and easier for other developers to use.
• Innovation is distributed: you will help subject-matter experts develop and evaluate prototypes, work with architects on enterprise alignment, and help the team refine selected concepts into deployable applications.
• You will join a high-performing team whose members combine technical depth, business judgment, collaboration, and executive-ready communication.

Required Qualifications:

• Advanced application-development experience across design, development, testing, deployment, administration, support, and modernization.
• Strong Python development skills and experience building secure APIs and integrations with enterprise systems, data, identity, and infrastructure.
• Experience partnering with subject-matter experts to frame problems, translate outcomes into requirements, develop prototypes, incorporate feedback, and mature solutions for enterprise use.
• Experience collaborating with enterprise or solution architects to turn requirements and technical constraints into scalable, compliant application designs.
• Experience with automated functional and nonfunctional testing, peer review, CI/CD, security scanning, dependency management, observability, and DevSecOps practices.
• Demonstrated experience applying AI, machine learning, or large language models in production-oriented applications.
• Advanced problem-solving ability for ambiguous, cross-domain, high-visibility work, including converting uncertainty into options, risks, and mitigation actions.
• Demonstrated technical leadership through judgment, delivery, mentoring, and influence.
• Strong written, verbal, presentation, and interpersonal skills across technical, business, and executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience managing the lifecycle of an enterprise platform, shared service layer, or integrated application portfolio.
• Experience delivering business applications from prototype through enterprise deployment, operations, and modernization.
• Experience with LLM APIs, retrieval-augmented generation, agentic workflows, knowledge services, data pipelines, and model evaluation.
• Experience with containers, automated delivery, configuration management, monitoring, capacity planning, backup, and recovery.
• Experience influencing technical standards and organizational change.

What Sets You Apart

• You can see the destination and build the next practical increment. Strategy and execution are part of the same job for you.
• You can draw out subject-matter expertise, turn it into a useful prototype and carry it through production deployment and improvement.
• You communicate with range, preserving technical accuracy while making value, risk, decisions, and progress clear to senior leaders.
• You influence change by creating clarity, building trust, demonstrating what works, and helping peers succeed.
• You balance capability with reliability, security, traceability, maintainability, and user outcomes.

Salary Note

Combined Salary Range

Company Overview

General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) engineers a diverse portfolio of high technology solutions, products and services that enable customers to successfully execute missions across all domains of operation. With a global team of 12,000+ top professionals, we partner with the best in industry to expand the bounds of innovation in the defense and scientific arenas. Given the nature of our work and who we are, we value trust, honesty, alignment and transparency. We offer highly competitive benefits and pride ourselves in being a great place to work with a shared sense of purpose. You will also enjoy a flexible work environment where contributions are recognized and rewarded. If who we are and what we do resonates with you, we invite you to join our high-performance team!

Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans