Staff Applied ML Engineer, Federal/National Security

The role

You will build and deploy production AI systems for federal and national security missions. You will work with LLMs, model fine-tuning, agentic systems, RAG, evaluation, and inference.

What you will do

• Build production LLM-powered applications, AI agents, and agentic workflows
• Develop and own model evaluation, fine-tuning, adaptation, and experimentation pipelines
• Determine when to use prompting, RAG, fine-tuning, specialized models, or combinations of these approaches
• Build rigorous eval systems for model and agent quality, reliability, tool use, and task completion
• Develop retrieval and context systems across structured and unstructured mission data
• Optimize models and inference for production environments
• Deploy and improve models based on real-world performance and user feedback
• Partner with FDEs and customers to translate mission requirements into production AI capabilities
• Turn solutions developed for individual deployments into reusable platform capabilities

Required qualifications

• Significant experience building ML or AI systems and deploying in production
• Hands-on experience with modern LLMs and foundation models
• Deep expertise in several of the following: LLM fine-tuning / model adaptation, Model evaluation, RAG and retrieval systems, Agentic systems and tool use, Model serving / inference, Embeddings and kno
• Ability to move comfortably between ML experimentation and production engineering
• Ability to operate independently against ambiguous technical problems
• Interest in working close to users and seeing how AI performs against real operational workflows
• U.S. citizenship is required
• Active Secret or Top-Secret Security Clearance

Nice to have

• Washington, DC / Northern Virginia preferred

Benefits

• Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement
• 100% employer paid, comprehensive health care including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family
• Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees' normal pay
• Unlimited PTO, with management approval
• Opportunities for professional development and continued learning
• Optional 401K, FSA, and equity incentives available
• Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind
• Cost effective GLP-1 solutions available through Crux

Before you apply

• U.S. citizenship is required
• Active Secret or Top-Secret Security Clearance required

About the company

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies in healthcare, cyber, and national security.