What are the responsibilities and job description for the Artificial Intelligence Engineer (Job ID: 4390) position at Valkyrie |?
Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Contingent upon prime contractor approval
Purpose:
- Valkyrie Enterprises has need for an Artificial Intelligence Engineer in Huntsville, AL working in the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) System Assessment Directorate
- In this role you will deliver technical knowledge and advice for design, evaluation, and advancement of AI-enabled applications, tools, and workflows. This role is intended for a hands-on technical professional who understands how modern AI systems are built and can help develop practical solutions using large language models, agentic workflows, orchestration frameworks, and supporting software infrastructure. The right candidate is a builder at heart—someone who explores new frameworks, prototypes ideas, and continuously seeks knowledge of emerging techniques. The ideal candidate follows the fast-moving AI ecosystem with innate curiosity
Job Description:
- Participate with government teams developing or assessing AI-enabled applications and tools
- Advise the customer on technical approaches for AI application design, prototyping, integration, and evaluation
- Assess solutions involving LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation, tool use, agentic workflows, orchestration layers, prompt pipelines, and evaluation harnesses
- Participate in architecture reviews, development approaches, model usage patterns, and technical risk areas
- Advise the government on AI engineering considerations such as latency, reliability, observability, testability, guardrails, data flow, and system integration
- Evaluate and compare modern AI frameworks, agentic libraries, and experimentation harnesses for suitability in mission use cases
- Assist with the development of technical guidance, prototypes, engineering recommendations, and briefings for government stakeholders
- Participate in test and evaluation activities for AI tools, including performance assessment, qualitative review, and workflow validation
- Collaborate with platform engineers, product leads, mission users, and government leadership to ensure AI efforts remain technically grounded and operationally relevant
- Monitor rapid changes in the AI ecosystem and develop informed recommendations on emerging tools and practices
Qualifications:
- Must have a Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, or related field and at least 12 years of relevant experience.
- Must have experience designing, building, integrating, or evaluating AI/ML-enabled applications or software tools.
- Must have familiarity with modern AI application patterns, including LLM-based applications, RAG, prompt engineering, agentic systems, and AI-assisted workflows.
- Must have experience with software development fundamentals, APIs, data handling, and system integration.
- Must have the ability to assess technical tradeoffs and communicate them clearly to both engineers and government stakeholders.
- Must have strong written and verbal communication skills.
Desired Qualifications:
- Experience with Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or similar languages commonly used in AI application development preferred.
- Familiarity with vector databases, embeddings, model APIs, evaluation frameworks, and agent testing harnesses preferred.
- Exposure to model hosting, inference pipelines, or cloud-based AI development environments preferred.
- Understanding of secure AI development practices, data protection, and operational constraints in government settings preferred.
- Experience working in defense, cyber, intelligence, or mission application development preferred.
- Familiarity with human-in-the-loop workflows, AI assurance, and evaluation methodologies preferred.
- Working knowledge of one or more agentic or orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, CrewAI, Haystack, LlamaIndex, or similar ecosystems preferred.
Security Requirements:
- Must be a US Citizen and possess an Active Secret Clearance
- Ability to obtaining a TS/SCI clearance required
Travel Requirements:
- Travel, to include international locations, may be required.
- If position requires travel by domestic flight or access to secure federal facilities/military bases, candidate must be able to obtain (by start of position) and maintain appropriate identification credentials, such as REAL ID. (More information regarding REAL ID can be found: https://www.dhs.gov/real-id)
Physical Requirements:
- Remaining in a stationary position, often standing, or sitting for prolonged periods
- Able to sit and work on a computer for long periods of time
- Moving about to accomplish tasks or moving from one worksite to another
- Communicating with others to exchange information
- Light work that includes moving objects up to 20 pounds
Valkyrie strictly adheres to a policy of equal employment opportunity. This policy is based on Valkyrie’s commitment to hire and retain qualified employees consistent with position requirements; and to seek, employ, promote and treat all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, pregnancy, childbirth, physical disability, mental disability, age, military status or protected veteran status, marital status, registered domestic partner or civil union status, gender (including sex stereotyping and gender identity or expression), medical condition, genetic information or sexual orientation or other protected characteristics
Additionally, Valkyrie Enterprises provides a variety of benefits to eligible employees to support your best health, wellness, and future, to include medical/dental/vision options, company paid life and disability insurances, 401k with match, education reimbursement, as well as company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO)