Principal, Agentic AI Practice (5450)

SMX is standing up and scaling an agentic AI practice: bringing agentic software engineering (autonomous AI agents that write, test, and modernize code) to Department of War, Federal Civilian, and Intelligence Community customers, with SMX's accreditation and authorization platform as the control and management plane. This role is the deputy to the practice owner and the field-facing technical person for the practice. You are more technical than a seller, more commercial than an architect, and you can build. You carry the load across the full scope of the practice: setting technical direction, shaping and closing opportunities, prototyping and validating solutions with your own hands, and representing the practice owner in customer, partner, and internal forums. You will partner closely with SMX's growth, delivery and technical organizations, which owns their respective parts of execution, while you own the technical field and the go-to-market motion. This is a remote position supporting a Herndon, VA based team.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Second in Command for the practice owner. Represent the practice and carry decisions in customer, partner, and internal settings when the owner is not in the room, and help set and drive the practice's technical and commercial direction.
• Own the technical narrative across the full opportunity lifecycle, from qualification to close, as the practice's lead technical seller.
• Demo, personally. Deliver compelling demonstrations of agentic software engineering platforms (such as autonomous coding agents) to technical and program stakeholders in customer settings.
• Prototype, integrate, and validate agentic AI solutions hands-on to prove feasibility and de-risk delivery before commitments are made to a customer.
• Understand the reference architecture. Develop and communicate architectures that integrate agentic AI with SMX's authorization platform and customer mission systems, articulating the path to ATO across FedRAMP High, IL5, IL6, and air-gapped environments.
• Shape practice strategy. Contribute to offering definition, partner strategy, pipeline prioritization, and the go-to-market motion.
• Set technical direction; hand off the build. Direct and validate feasibility in partnership with SMX solutions architects and the delivery organization, who own execution.
• Drive cross-functional execution across capture, growth, delivery, and partner functions to shape opportunities well and execute strongly against commitments.
• Author and review proposals as a technical lead, and identify the technical resource needs required for compliant, winning responses.
• Build the pipeline. Advance a qualified AI and agentic solutions pipeline of DoW opportunities, with Federal Civilian and IC pursuits as growth vectors.
• Run partner co-sell responsibly. Support co-sell with technology and cloud partners (for example, AWS Marketplace / ACE), navigating partner-neutrality and organizational-conflict-of-interest considerations, and resourcing SME and delivery commitments before reaffirming them to customers or partners.
• Represent SMX externally in customer briefings, industry panels, and thought-leadership sessions, and stay current on advances in agentic AI, LLM tooling, and modern software delivery.

Required Skills & Experience

• Clearance: Ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance, Secret minimum, with Top Secret and SCI eligibility strongly preferred given IC pursuits.
• Education: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, a related discipline, or commensurate work experience.
• Experience: At least eight (8) years in technical sales, sales engineering, or solutions architecture in a corporate or government solutions environment, including time operating at a strategic, executive-facing level.
• Hands-on agentic AI tooling: Demonstrated experience with agentic AI / LLM developer tooling (autonomous coding agents such as Devin, or comparable), with the ability to personally build and demo, not only direct others.
• Builder credibility: Able to prototype, integrate, and validate solutions directly, not only whiteboard them.
• Proven technical sales success in high-security and compliance-driven environments.
• Experience as a Solution Architect with multiple full life-cycle customer implementations.
• Demonstrated ability to personally lead customer demonstrations and present reference architectures to technical buyers.
• Experience with modern IT practices, DevSecOps, and cloud operations (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Experience with architectural and implementation-level design and with software development methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, SAFe).
• Excellent verbal, written, and visual communication skills, including the ability to write proposals and present to executives, large groups, and small technical sessions.
• Deep technical curiosity and the ability to problem-solve and create solutions under ambiguity.

Desired Skills & Experience

• Experience selling or delivering within DoW / DoD, with Federal Civilian and IC relationships a strong plus.
• Familiarity with federal authorization pathways (FedRAMP, IL4/IL5/IL6, ATO) and AWS GovCloud.
• Prior experience standing up a new practice, partner motion, or solution offering from early stage.
• Comprehensive understanding of hybrid architectures and experience developing solutions across varying infrastructure, coding languages, and applications.
• Experience with Systems Modeling Language (SysML) and architecture frameworks such as the Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) and the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF).
• Research and development (R&D) experience.

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The SMX salary determination process takes into account a number of factors, including but not limited to, geographic location, Federal Government contract labor categories, relevant prior work experience, specific skills, education and certifications. At SMX, one of our Core Values is to Invest in Our People so we offer a competitive mix of compensation, learning & development opportunities, and benefits. Some key components of our robust benefits include health insurance, paid leave, and retirement.