{"id":1277014,"url":"https://alion.io/job/groundswell-associate-applied-ai-engineer","title":"Associate Applied AI Engineer","company":{"id":2913152,"name":"Groundswell","domain":"gswell.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/gswell-com","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"junior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"board_field","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Washington, United States","New York, United States","United States","Mexico","Georgia"],"countries":["US","MX","GE"],"hiring_countries":["US"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":{"min":88177,"max":171637,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":171637},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":1,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"Structured Outputs","optional":false},{"name":"Tool Use","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"AWS Bedrock","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"LLM","optional":true},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":true},{"name":"ServiceNow","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-21T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-21","last_verified_at":"2026-09-29T16:44:47Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":9,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":9},"description":"Who Are We? \nGroundswell is a premier technology integrator and solution provider, resolutely committed to solving the most complex challenges facing federal agencies today. Our name, Groundswell, represents our commitment to be an unstoppable, seismic change in government. Ours is a small company culture with big company reach and results. Are you ready to be audacious, be bold and drive change at a rapid pace? Join us, where we’ll make a greater impact together.\nWhat You'll do:\nWe are looking for an engineer who can take a technical approach and an incompletely defined business need and produce working software. This role will grow into defining both.\nThis is a hands-on role, client-facing role. You will work directly with business stakeholders to refine the requirements around a business need and build the result. Proposing a better approach when you see one is expected. Requirements definition becomes your responsibility early, and technical design follows as you develop.\nThe work spans client delivery, internal product development, rapid proofs of concept, and internal enablement. Some weeks are spent primarily building functionality and others in front of customers. We are looking for range rather than specialization.\nMost customers do not yet have a clear picture of what AI can do for their work. Helping them develop one is part of this role.\nResponsibilities\nTake a defined technical approach and build it into production-quality functionality.\nParticipate in requirements discussions with business stakeholders to understand the workflow, business need, and desired outcome\nContribute ideas and alternative approaches during solution design, including identifying opportunities to simplify the solution or reduce the AI component where appropriate.\nContribute to building complete applications that integrate AI capabilities with prompt and retrieval design, structured outputs, tool and function definitions, API integration, data handling, error handling, and user-facing functionality.\nBuild evaluation sets from real data, measure results against them, and report findings accurately, including results that do not support the chosen approach.\nInvestigate failures by identifying where a capability produced an incorrect result, characterizing the cause, and implementing a fix.\nSupport client demonstrations and proof-of-concepts to help customers understand how AI can be applied to their business challenges.\nSeek feedback, ask thoughtful questions, and continuously build your understanding of client needs and AI best practices.\nInstrument and document your work, including logging, traceability, intended behavior, known limitations, validation method, and failure handling.\nMove between client delivery, internal product work, rapid proofs of concept, and internal enablement as the work requires.\nRaise blockers, unclear requirements, and results you do not trust early rather than working around them.\nContribute reusable patterns, prompts, and evaluation harnesses back to the team.\nRequired qualifications\nBachelor’s degree in a technical field, or equivalent demonstrated ability.\n1+ years of professional software development experience.\nHands-on experience building applications that integrate large language models, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, structured extraction, and/or tool use. Experience may be gained through professional work, internships, academic research, or significant personal/open-source projects.\nExperience contributing to applications that integrate AI capabilities with APIs, data handling, and user-facing functionality\nFamiliarity with a general-purpose language such as Python, TypeScript, or SQL, with experience integrating APIs and working with imperfect data.\nAbility to conduct a requirements conversation with a non-technical stakeholder, identify the underlying need, and return with a proposed approach.\nWillingness to question a design, including one you have been given, and to make the case for an alternative.\nAbility to work through ambiguous requirements with guidance, ask thoughtful questions, and drive assigned work to completion.\nClear written and verbal communication. This role produces documentation and materials that clients read.\nCandor about the limits of your knowledge and a willingness to ask rather than assume.\nU.S. Citizenship required. Ability to obtain and maintain any federal government background investigation, suitability determination, or security clearance required by assigned client engagements.\n.\nPreferred qualifications\nPrior client-facing work in consulting, solutions engineering, professional services, or implementation.\nExperience with a low-code or application platform such as Appian, OutSystems, Mendix, Microsoft Power Platform, ServiceNow, or Salesforce.\nPublic sector or regulated-industry delivery experience.\nExperience with cloud AI services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure OpenAI.\nFamiliarity with LLM evaluation or observability tooling.\nPersonal or open source projects involving language models, agents, retrieval, or evaluation.\nSkills:\nCertification:\nWhy You’ll Never Want to Leave:\nComprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans \nFlexible Spending Account \n4% 401K Match (immediate vesting) \nPaid Time Off \nTuition reimbursement, certification programs, and professional development\nFlexible work schedule\nOn-site gym and childcare option \nThe salary range for this role takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions, including but not limited to skill sets, experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs. The disclosed range estimate has not been adjusted for any applicable geographic differential associated with the location at which the position may be filled. At Groundswell, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:\n$88,177.00 - $171,637.00NOTE: Groundswell does not accept unsolicited resumes through or from search firms or staffing agencies. All unsolicited resumes will be considered the property of Groundswell, and Groundswell will not be obligated to pay a placement fee.\nEqual Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, pregnancy, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected category under applicable federal, state, and local laws.\nRead a copy of the Company’s Non-Discrimination Policy Statement.\nAdditional Resources:\nEO 13496 Notification of Employee Rights under NLRA\n\nKnow your rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal\n\nDisability Accessibility Accommodation: If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request a reasonable accommodation as part of the employment selection process, please contact us at  or 703-639-1777.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7135,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":1,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["401k plan","Flexible schedule","Professional development"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Government"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-26T02:00:41Z"}],"liveness":{"score":85,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.854,"p_room":1,"age_days":8,"expected_fill_days":32,"reasons":["conf:15","velocity","win:early","comp:junior"],"computed_at":"2026-09-29T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":171637,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/groundswell-associate-applied-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/groundswell-associate-applied-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-30T03:39:05Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":2558,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":2442,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-01T00:00:00Z"}}}