AI Developer Engineer at Unissant in Ashburn, VA, USA

Job description

• We are seeking an AI Developer/Engineer to join our team and support our client, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This is a remote position.
• The ideal candidate is a hands-on AI/ML engineer who can develop, evaluate, tune, and operationalize secure and maintainable AI capabilities for FEMA mission programs. This individual will deliver solutions across Azure Ready AI and other FEMA-approved platforms, including AWS, GCP, Microsoft 365, ServiceNow, and CRM/SaaS environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and productionize RAG applications, chatbots, document translation and summarization services, predictive models, anomaly-detection capabilities, and routing/optimization solutions.
• Evaluate new AI use cases and provide feasibility, architecture, cost, complexity, schedule, and solution-stack estimates.
• Select appropriate algorithms; prepare and engineer data; train, validate, tune, document, and monitor models.
• Define and maintain model-performance metrics, evaluation processes, monitoring, and improvement approaches.
• Integrate AI/ML models with full-stack applications and enterprise workflows through APIs, approved cloud AI services, and secure data pipelines.
• Implement MLOps and DevSecOps practices, including git-based workflows, automated testing, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, observability, and controlled deployments.
• Support AI security boundaries, ATO artifacts, data governance, role-based access controls, and model/application risk-management activities.
• Create technical documentation covering architecture, experiments, model performance, operations, and customer use.

Requirements

• Five (5) to ten (10) years of experience in AI/ML, data science, software engineering, cloud application development, or related technical disciplines.
• Proficiency in Python, R, or JavaScript, with experience using machine-learning and deep-learning frameworks.
• Experience with Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, git-based source control, and observability tooling.
• Experience analyzing complex datasets and deploying scalable, maintainable AI/ML solutions into production.
• Experience with cloud-hosted AI services, secure APIs, data pipelines, and enterprise application integration.
• Strong analytical, technical documentation, troubleshooting, and collaboration skills.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, or a related technical field required.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to explain AI/ML designs, model performance, technical risks, and solution tradeoffs to technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Ability to write clear, concise content and manage sensitive information in a highly confidential manner.
• U.S. Citizenship is required.
• Favorably adjudicated FEMA Public Trust suitability is required before the employee's start date.
• Must meet DHS/FEMA training and handling requirements for SBU/FOUO and potentially CUI, PII, or other sensitive FEMA data.
• Cloud, AI/ML, data-science, DevSecOps, or relevant technical certification preferred.

Skills

Required

• Python
• R
• JavaScript
• Machine learning frameworks
• Deep learning frameworks
• Terraform
• CI/CD pipelines
• Git-based source control
• Observability tooling
• Cloud-hosted AI services
• Secure APIs
• Data pipelines

Preferred

• Cloud certification
• AI/ML certification
• Data-science certification
• DevSecOps certification