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Steampunk, Inc. · 1 month ago

Senior AI Developer

McLean, VA

Full-time

Onsite

Senior Level, Lead/Staff

$140K/yr - $190K/yr

8+ years exp

Steampunk is a Change Agent in the Federal contracting industry, bringing new thinking to clients in various sectors. They are seeking a highly skilled Senior AI Developer to design, build, and optimize advanced AI solutions, collaborating closely with product teams and engineers to deliver robust, production-ready AI capabilities.

ConsultingInformation Technology

Growth Opportunities

No H1B

U.S. Citizen Only

Responsibilities

Develop end-to-end AI solutions including LLM-powered applications, predictive ML models, multi-agent workflows, RAG pipelines, and specialized AI microservices

Implement reusable AI components, libraries, and APIs that streamline application development and accelerate delivery across programs

Integrate AI models with enterprise systems, APIs, data platforms, vector databases, and cloud-native services to deliver scalable mission capabilities

Drive iterative experimentation, prototyping, and model improvement cycles in collaboration with Data Scientists and AI Evaluation Scientists

Design and implement advanced prompt strategies, context management layers, retrieval systems, and LLM orchestration logic

Build scalable inference services, optimize model performance, and collaborate with LLMOps to enable robust deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement

Translate user needs and mission workflows into intuitive, reliable AI-powered features through active partnership with designers and product teams

Implement secure-by-design and trustworthy AI practices, including safety guardrails, input sanitization, content filtering, and integration of evaluation metrics

Contribute to internal AI frameworks, code patterns, and shared accelerators that raise delivery quality across the AI & Data Exploitation Practice

Mentor junior developers, conduct code reviews, and support engineering excellence across multi-disciplinary AI delivery teams

Stay current with emerging AI techniques, libraries, foundation models, and agent frameworks, evaluating their applicability to client missions

Qualification

PythonAI frameworksAI application developmentCloud platformsContainerizationRAG architecturesPrompt engineeringData processingAnalytical skillsMentoringCommunication skills

Required

Ability to hold a position of public trust with the U.S. government

Bachelor's degree and 8 years of experience

5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with at least 2+ years focused on AI/ML, generative AI, or LLM-driven application development

Strong proficiency in Python and modern AI frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar

Demonstrated ability to design and develop production-grade AI applications, including APIs, back-end services, orchestration logic, and front-end integrations (when needed)

Experience implementing RAG architectures, embeddings, vector stores, and context retrieval patterns

Familiarity with multi-agent orchestration frameworks, prompt engineering strategies, and advanced LLM interaction design

Strong understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), including compute, serverless services, and security fundamentals for AI workloads

Working knowledge of containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes), and CI/CD pipelines for AI-based systems

Experience with structured and unstructured data, document processing, and application integration with existing enterprise systems

Understanding of responsible AI principles including safety, fairness, privacy, and model risk mitigation

Strong analytical and communication skills with the ability to collaborate across engineering, design, and mission domains

Proven experience mentoring teammates and raising the technical bar of development teams

Benefits

Steampunk’s total compensation package for employees.

Company

Steampunk, Inc.

Glassdoor4.4

Steampunk is anchored by a startup culture with a customer-centered delivery approach, we put our Federal government clients in the center of everything we design, develop, and deliver to drive high-quality mission impacts and user experiences at speed.

Founded in 2019

Washington, District of Columbia, USA

201-500 employees