Data & AI Engineer (Agentic Systems)

The role

The Applied AI Engineer will design, build, and integrate agentic AI capabilities to support mission applications. This role focuses on building reliable agentic capabilities that move beyond experimentation into working software in secure and classified environments.

What you will do

• Design, build, and maintain agentic AI applications that integrate LLMs, tools, APIs, and enterprise data.
• Develop AI agents capable of executing multi-step tasks and coordinating actions across systems.
• Implement agent orchestration, tool calling, workflow state management, and error handling.
• Build and integrate RAG pipelines, semantic search, embeddings, and vector-based retrieval.
• Develop backend services and APIs using Python.
• Integrate agentic AI capabilities into existing applications and enterprise platforms.
• Establish testing, evaluation, monitoring, and reliability practices for AI agents.
• Collaborate with data engineers to ensure agents can access governed enterprise data.
• Work with platform engineers to deploy AI applications within Kubernetes/OpenShift environments.
• Troubleshoot end-to-end issues involving agent behavior, tool execution, APIs, and infrastructure.

Required qualifications

• Approximately 3–5 years of software engineering experience, or equivalent demonstrated technical capability.
• Hands-on experience building agentic AI applications, including AI agents, LLM tool calling, multi-step workflows, or agent orchestration.
• Strong proficiency with Python and backend software development.
• Experience integrating LLMs into applications using APIs, SDKs, or comparable technologies.
• Experience building and integrating REST APIs and connecting applications with external services or data sources.
• Understanding of agent workflows, tool execution, state management, and error handling.
• Experience with Git, testing, debugging, and modern software development practices.
• Experience working in cloud-native or containerized environments.
• Ability to troubleshoot application and integration issues across APIs, data services, infrastructure, and AI components.
• Ability to work independently and rapidly learn new technologies.
• Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility required.

Nice to have

• GEOINT experience
• Experience with agentic AI frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, or comparable technologies.
• Experience developing multi-agent systems, autonomous workflows, or AI-enabled software development tools.
• Experience with Model Context Protocol (MCP), function calling, or other tool integration patterns.
• Experience with RAG, embeddings, vector databases, semantic search, or knowledge graphs.

Benefits

• Medical/Dental/Vision
• Premiums are 100% Company Paid
• Health Savings Account
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance
• 401k Retirement Plan
• Company Stock Options
• Home Office Budget
• Flexible Time Off (FTO) plus all Federal Holidays, one week for Thanksgiving, and two weeks for Christmas and New Year’s
• Paid Parental Leave
• Reimbursement for approved trainings/subscriptions
• Conferences (travel, lodging, and fees)

Before you apply

• Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility required
• Local to the National Capital Region and able to support onsite work in Springfield, VA

About the company

Defense Unicorns delivers mission value by streamlining software delivery so customers can focus on the most important challenges. They create and deliver secure solutions for continuous software integration and delivery.