AI Engineer, Special Programs

About This Role

An AI Engineer for Special Programs focuses on building and implementing AI capabilities for U.S. federal agencies. This involves designing and deploying AI models, APIs, tools, and integrations. The role requires close collaboration with product, research, infrastructure, and legal/governance teams to ensure AI and future models are highly effective for missions while maintaining safety, transparency, and ethical standards.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and optimize integrations between AI frontier models (e.g., Grok family) and government systems, platforms, and data environments
• Collaborate on custom SDKs, APIs, developer tools, and documentation tailored for government and enterprise developers
• Partner with agency stakeholders to understand requirements, prototype solutions, and iterate rapidly based on real-world feedback
• Ship production-grade code and features with a bias toward speed, simplicity, and measurable impact

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or another STEM discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience in software development in lieu of a degree
• Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed
• Must successfully obtain and maintain a Top Secret Security Clearance as a condition of employment

Nice to have:

• 1+ years of hands-on software engineering experience building scalable systems, APIs, or AI/ML applications (strong Python proficiency, other languages a plus)
• Experience working with large language models, generative AI, or agentic systems—either in research, production, or applied engineering
• Familiarity with government or public sector technology environments (federal civilian agencies, state/local gov, or regulated industries like healthcare, finance, or infrastructure)
• Strong product sensibility: ability to translate ambiguous stakeholder needs into concrete technical solutions
• Demonstrated ability to write clean, maintainable, high-performance code under tight timelines
• Exceptional problem-solving skills and intellectual curiosity—you thrive on hard, ambiguous challenges
• Excellent communication skills; you can explain complex technical concepts to non-technical partners clearly and concisely
• Prior work on AI safety, governance, red-teaming, or responsible AI deployment
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), or API orchestration
• Background in policy-adjacent technical roles, civic tech, or public-interest technology
• Contributions to open-source AI projects or developer tools

Benefits

• Long-term incentives, in the form of company stock, stock options, or long-term cash awards