Junior AI Solutions Engineer (Washington DC)

MUST BE A US CITIZEN. NO H1B or Green card holders. This position requires you to obtain a TS clearance.

Strategic Innovation Group (SIG) is seeking a high-caliber, mathematically grounded, and relentlessly curious Junior to Mid-Level AI/ML Engineer to build next-generation enterprise AI applications for federal civilian clients. Working alongside senior architects and technical leaders, you will design, engineer, and deploy production-grade Large Language Model (LLM) workflows, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines, and agentic AI systems. The AI Solutions Engineer will focus on enabling, developing, and innovating within enterprise AI environments, supporting both the architecture and implementation of advanced AI solutions. They will build and deploy AI applications leveraging large language models (LLMs), and agent frameworks.

The ideal candidate is a recent top-tier university graduate or early-career engineer with exceptional coding fundamentals, a strong grasp of data structures and ML systems, and a passion for turning state-of-the-art AI research into secure, production-ready federal solutions.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The essential functions include, but are not limited to the following:

• Design, develop, and deploy scalable AI/ML solutions, including LLM-powered applications, RAG architectures, and agent-based workflows, in complex, enterprise environments.
• Build and maintain end-to-end ML pipelines (data engineering, model development, deployment, monitoring, and retraining) using Python, SQL,  and modern MLOps practices.
• Develop and integrate AI applications using foundation models (such as Claude, GPT variants, and open-weight Hugging Face models) and cloud-native services across AWS and Azure (e.g., Bedrock, SageMaker, OpenAI Service, AI Search).
• Design secure, auditable, and explainable AI systems with strong governance, traceability, and human-in-the-loop controls for mission-critical and compliance-sensitive environments.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to prepare data, enable semantic retrieval, and deliver robust AI-driven solutions aligned to operational needs.
• Continuously monitor, evaluate, and optimize AI system performance to meet client-defined objectives for accuracy, reliability, and scalability.
• Establish and maintain scalable AI infrastructure using containerization and orchestration tools (Docker, Kubernetes) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Document solutions and provide knowledge transfer to ensure long-term sustainability and adoption of AI capabilities.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.

• Exceptional new graduates with strong undergraduate research, hackathon wins, or elite internships will be considered.

• Strong programming proficiency in Python, with a solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, API integration, and asynchronous programming.

• Demonstrated project or professional experience working with LLMs, prompt engineering paradigms, vector databases (e.g., Pinecone, Milvus, Qdrant), or agentic frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, LangGraph).

• Familiarity with Kubernetes and containerization tools (Docker).

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE/QUALIFICATIONS

• Track record of shipping production-grade code or open-source contributions in machine learning or systems engineering.
• Hands-on experience deploying open-weight models using vLLM, TGI, or Ollama, and optimizing inference performance.
• Exposure to distributed data processing frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark / PySpark)[cite: 1].
• Strong appetite for rapid learning, breaking down complex technical ambiguity, and working in a fast-paced government consulting environment.

SIG is a fast growing 8(a) government contractor based in Arlington, Virginia. We offer a broad range of technical expertise and experience in Digital Transformation, Data Management/Data Science, and Systems Modernization. At SIG, our people are our mission. Come join our team! A successful candidate will be offered the following:

• Great work/life balance
• Eligibility for performance-based participation in cash bonuses
• Potential to participate in growth of the company through incentives
• Excellent benefits, including health, dental, vision, generous PTO, a 401(k) with match, life insurance, short- and long-term disability, and a health savings account (HSA)

The company is an Equal Opportunity Employer, drug-free workplace, and complies with ADA regulations as applicable.