{"id":1976309,"url":"https://alion.io/job/performance-drone-works-senior-aiml-engineer","title":"Senior AI/ML Engineer","company":{"id":176596,"name":"Performance Drone Works","domain":"pdw.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/performance-drone-works","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Rippling","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":18,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":78,"computed_at":"2026-10-15T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Denver, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":136000,"max_usd":259000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":1213},"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Embeddings","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"Quantization","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Reranking","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-06T19:58:28Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-06","last_verified_at":"2026-10-15T07:08:00Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":8,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":8},"description":"Performance Drone Works (PDW) is building the next generation of tactical robotic systems used across defense, national security, and public safety missions. We are building a new center of engineering excellence to design our new category of tactical robotic systems and the industrial capacity to deliver them, bringing decisive airpower into the hands of every operator. We are not here to make promises; we are here to deliver real systems with real capabilities for real missions.\nYou will join a team of operators, engineers, and builders who solve hard problems with humility and focus. We design and produce multi-mission aerial systems that operators trust to perform in real-world conditions, reliably, repeatedly, and at scale. Our approach is grounded in operator-centered design, rapid iteration from field use, and U.S.-based manufacturing. We operate by a clear set of values: Mission First, Aim Farther, Own It, Win Together. This is how we build advantage and how we help protect our service members, our communities, and our country.\nNow, we’re entering a new phase of growth and are looking for a Senior AI/ML Engineer to serve as PDW's senior technical leader for enterprise AI-helping define our AI strategy, architecture, and technical roadmap while remaining hands-on in building and scaling the capabilities that put that vision into production.\nWhatYou’llDo\nServe as PDW's senior technical authority for enterprise AI/ML, partnering with technology leadership to shape the AI strategy, architecture, technical roadmap, engineering standards, and investment priorities-and taking hands-on ownership of turning that direction into working capabilities.\nDesign and implement AI orchestration and control capabilities including model routing, authentication and authorization, policy enforcement, observability, usage tracking, cost management, and auditability.\nBuild production retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solutions, including ingestion pipelines, chunking, embeddings, vector search, retrieval, reranking, and generation across structured and unstructured enterprise data.\nDevelop AI agents and agentic workflows that securely interact with enterprise applications, APIs, data sources, and business processes while respecting underlying identity and authorization boundaries.\nPartner with Engineering, Manufacturing, IT, Cybersecurity, and business teams to identify high-value AI opportunities, rapidly prototype solutions, evaluate technical feasibility, and transition successful concepts into production.\nDevelop repeatable model evaluation and benchmarking frameworks to compare models and architectures based on quality, accuracy, latency, reliability, security, and cost using PDW-specific workloads.\nDesign, build, and operate production AI/ML applications, APIs, data pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and supporting infrastructure using modern software engineering, CI/CD, and MLOps practices.\nEvaluate and optimize AI workloads across SaaS, API, cloud, GPU, and internally hosted infrastructure, including opportunities for model optimization, fine-tuning, quantization, and accelerated inference.\nImplement technical controls for AI security and governance, including data protection, access control, model and provider restrictions, guardrails, validation, human oversight, and protection against threats such as prompt injection and data leakage.\nEstablish PDW's AI engineering discipline, including reusable patterns, reference architectures, development standards, documentation, and technical governance; mentor engineers and teams adopting AI; and continuously evaluate emerging technologies to recommend how PDW's AI strategy and architecture should evolve.\nRequirements\n7+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, machine learning engineering, data engineering, AI engineering, or a related technical discipline, with significant recent hands-on experience developing AI/ML systems.\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related STEM discipline, or equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience.\nAdvanced proficiency in Python and demonstrated experience building production-quality software, services, APIs, data pipelines, and distributed systems.\nHands-on experience with modern AI/ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX, with a strong understanding of machine learning fundamentals, neural networks, transformers, embeddings, and modern generative AI architectures.\nDemonstrated experience building production applications using large language models and foundation models, including prompt engineering, structured generation, tool/function calling, and model APIs.\nDemonstrated experience designing and implementing RAG architectures, including document ingestion, embeddings, vector databases or search, retrieval strategies, reranking, context management, and evaluation.\nExperience building AI agents, tool-enabled models, workflow orchestration, or other agentic systems that interact with applications, APIs, and enterprise data.\nExperience deploying and operating AI/ML systems in production, including automated testing, CI/CD, containers, monitoring, evaluation, observability, performance optimization, and MLOps practices.\nStrong understanding of secure application architecture, identity and access control, data protection, and the security considerations associated with enterprise AI systems.\nDemonstrated ability to independently translate ambiguous business or technical problems into architectures and working solutions, troubleshoot complex systems, communicate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders, and take solutions from exploration through production.\nMust have the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Security Clearance.\nPreferred\nExperience building enterprise AI platforms, AI gateways, model-routing architectures, or multi-model environments using multiple commercial and/or open-source AI ecosystems.\nExperience deploying and optimizing open-source AI models on GPU infrastructure, including model serving, inference optimization, quantization, and/or distributed inference, with the ability to evaluate the performance, cost, and operational tradeoffs of internally hosted versus API-based models.\nExperience developing AI/ML systems within aerospace, defense, robotics, manufacturing, or another highly technical or regulated environment, including working with sensitive or export-controlled information.\nPhysical Requirements\nThe physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met to successfully perform the essential functions of the job. Ability to sit, stand, bend, reach, climb, and move about regularly throughout the day and lift / carry up to 25 pounds. Must have manual dexterity to operate standard office and computer equipment. Must be physically capable of occasionally assisting with the setup, movement, and installation of computer, networking, development, or GPU computing equipment.\nWork Environment\nThis is a hybrid position with regular on-site presence and typically operates in a standard office environment and within PDW facilities that house engineering and manufacturing operations. This role requires the use of standard office and computing equipment and close cross-departmental collaboration with both independent and team-based responsibilities. Occasional travel between PDW sites, partner locations, industry events, or other business locations may be required. Standard work hours are PDW's core business hours, with availability outside those hours as needed for significant production AI platform incidents or operational priorities.\nBenefits\nPDW values our team, and we offer a compensation package reflective of your experience and capabilities. Benefits include:\nComprehensive BCBS medical, dental, and vision coverage; 80% sponsored by the company.\nSafe Harbor 401(K) with company match.\nPaid Parental Leave.\nOn-site gym at our Huntsville, AL and Denver, CO locations.\nEmployer provided life insurance.\nRobust Employee Assistance Program (EAP).\nA work environment that encourages teamwork and innovation.\nCompetitive salary, generous paid time off (PTO), and flexible leave options.\nEEO Statement\nPDW is an equal opportunity employer that upholds all federal and state non-discrimination laws. We ensure a fair and unbiased evaluation for employment for all qualified candidates regardless of race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, marital status, medical condition, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.","description_format":"text","description_chars":8732,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":7,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Life insurance","Parental leave"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Drones & UAVs","Military Drones"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-06T21:31:22Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 1","filings_12m":1,"filings_prev_12m":2,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":302500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-03T21:08:04+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":0}],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":8,"expected_fill_days":78,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-15T05:46:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/performance-drone-works-senior-aiml-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/performance-drone-works-senior-aiml-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-15T10:40:17Z","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":16156,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-16T00:00:00Z"}},"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":176596},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=176596"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fperformance-drone-works-senior-aiml-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%2Fperformance-drone-works-senior-aiml-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%2Fperformance-drone-works-senior-aiml-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/performance-drone-works-senior-aiml-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fperformance-drone-works-senior-aiml-engineer"}]}