Associate AI Engineer - JobID-0025

Innovative Defense Technologies (IDT) is a provider of cutting-edge cloud-based integration and automated testing for the U.S. Department of Defense. They are seeking an Associate AI Engineer to design and deliver engineering-focused AI solutions, focusing on building reliable, mission-relevant systems and collaborating with teams to integrate AI capabilities into broader architectures.

Responsibilities

• Design and Build AI Solutions: Design and implement end-to-end agentic AI systems that support planning, reasoning, tool use, and multi-step execution in real-world environments. Build modular, testable components that move from prototype to operational capability
• Integrate Models and Tools: Develop integrations across LLMs, APIs, data sources, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) interfaces to enable intelligent agents to interact with external systems, retrieve context, and take action safely and reliably
• Develop Retrieval Pipelines: Build and optimize Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines that connect models to live knowledge sources, structured data, and enterprise content to improve factual grounding, contextual relevance, and response quality
• Engineer Conversational and Agentic Interfaces: Create conversational systems and intelligent agents with memory, contextual awareness, adaptive decision-making, and support for multi-turn user and system interactions
• Implement and Evaluate AI Workflows: Translate technical objectives into working pipelines, run experiments, evaluate agent behavior, and iterate on prompts, orchestration logic, retrieval quality, and system performance to improve reliability and usability
• Scope and Define Requirements: Gather, document, and validate technical and functional requirements from project artifacts, stakeholders, and mission needs to ensure feasibility, completeness, and alignment with operational goals
• Collaborate Across Teams: Work closely with engineers, technical leads, and mission stakeholders to integrate AI capabilities into broader software and system architectures. Participate in technical reviews, design discussions, and delivery planning
• Support Technical Quality: Contribute to testing, debugging, and performance optimization of AI-enabled applications, including edge cases involving context management, retrieval failures, tool execution, and orchestration logic
• Learn and Apply Emerging Practices: Stay current on advances in LLMs, agent frameworks, orchestration methods, and applied AI engineering practices, and bring that knowledge into practical system design and implementation
• Communicate Technical Work: Clearly document architectures, workflows, assumptions, and implementation decisions so that solutions are maintainable, explainable, and transferable across teams

Skills

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical field, or equivalent full-time professional experience
• 0–3 years of full-time professional experience in software engineering, machine learning engineering, AI engineering, or related technical roles
• Ability to travel up to 10% of the time as needed
• Proficiency in Python, including experience with core libraries such as NumPy and Pandas
• Experience building software with one or more modern AI/ML frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, or AutoGen
• Familiarity with Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, agent orchestration, or conversational AI systems
• Familiarity with retrieval systems, vector databases, embeddings, or RAG-based application design
• Understanding of software engineering fundamentals, including version control, testing, debugging, and writing maintainable code
• Ability to work independently on technical tasks while collaborating effectively in a team environment
• Strong problem-solving skills, curiosity, and a builder mindset focused on turning ideas into working systems
• Experience building agentic AI systems that use tools, memory, planning, or multi-step execution
• Familiarity with Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations or similar model-to-tool integration patterns
• Experience deploying AI services, APIs, or workflows in cloud or production environments
• Experience with vector databases, retrieval infrastructure, knowledge graph integration, or enterprise search
• Exposure to evaluation methods for LLMs and agents, including reasoning quality, hallucination reduction, tool-use reliability, and retrieval performance
• Experience with Docker, REST APIs, Git-based development workflows, or CI/CD pipelines
• Experience working on defense, government, or other mission-oriented technical programs
• Strong interest in building practical AI systems that must operate reliably in complex, real-world environments

Benefits

• Generous benefits package
• Competitive PTO
• Paid holidays
• 401(k) with immediate vesting and matching
• 9/80 optional schedule (2nd and 4th Friday off every month)
• Tuition Assistance Reimbursement Program
• Professional Development Resources
• Pre-Tax Commuter Benefits
• Organization-Wide Monthly Tech Connect Events
• Annual Employee Recognition Awards
• Regular Social Events and Catered Lunches

Company Overview