AI Engineer / Search Engineer

Certified Technical Experts, Inc. is hiring an AI Engineer / Search Engineer to design, implement, tune, test, and support AI and enterprise search capabilities for FLRA’s Intelligent Document Processing and AI-Enabled Search initiative within an approved Microsoft 365 GCC/Azure environment.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement AI-enabled search for FLRA bargaining unit records
• Configure and optimize Azure AI Search indexes, including fields, filters, analyzers, semantic configurations, and vector search
• Build keyword, Boolean, full-text, metadata, semantic, and vector-based search functionality
• Develop and support natural-language question answering and source-grounded responses using Azure OpenAI or other approved AI services
• Implement Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) using FLRA documents, extracted metadata, and search indexes
• Generate, store, and manage embeddings for semantic and vector retrieval
• Ensure AI-generated answers cite or reference the originating Government documents
• Support document classification, metadata extraction, and confidence scoring using Azure AI Document Intelligence and related AI capabilities
• Create logic to identify and maintain relationships among bargaining unit records, including amendments, consolidations, reorganizations, revocations, successorship determinations, and related cases
• Develop and tune relevance ranking strategies to improve search accuracy and usability
• Configure metadata filters and structured retrieval using FLRA-required fields such as agency, bargaining unit, labor organization, case number, docket number, certification type, dates, region, and location
• Support human-in-the-loop validation workflows for reviewing AI-generated classifications and metadata
• Develop evaluation methods for search quality, retrieval relevance, classification accuracy, metadata extraction, and AI response quality
• Tune prompts, retrieval strategies, chunking approaches, embeddings, and search configurations based on testing and Government feedback
• Implement guardrails to keep AI responses grounded in authorized FLRA content and prevent unsupported information
• Support automated ingestion and indexing of newly received documents
• Work with the Azure Platform & Integration Engineer to integrate AI/search services with SharePoint, APIs, Azure services, and application components
• Participate in system integration testing, UAT, defect resolution, production deployment, monitoring, and performance tuning
• Maintain technical documentation covering AI models, prompts, search configurations, index schemas, evaluation methods, and operational procedures
• Follow Federal security requirements, including CUI protection, FedRAMP-authorized services, least-privilege access, and NIST SP 800-53 controls

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related field, or equivalent professional experience
• 5+ years of software, search, AI, machine learning, or data engineering experience
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with enterprise search, AI/ML, or cloud-based AI solutions
• Strong hands-on experience with Azure AI Search or comparable enterprise search technology
• Experience with semantic search, vector search, embeddings, similarity search, and relevance ranking
• Experience implementing RAG solutions
• Experience with Azure OpenAI, OpenAI APIs, or comparable large-language-model platforms
• Experience developing source-grounded question-answering solutions
• Strong experience with Python, C#/.NET, or similar programming languages
• Experience with Azure AI Document Intelligence or comparable OCR/document-processing technology
• Experience with document classification and structured metadata extraction
• Experience working with unstructured content such as PDFs, scanned documents, and OCR-generated text
• Experience designing search index schemas, metadata models, filters, and query strategies
• Experience with text chunking, embedding generation, vector indexing, and retrieval strategies
• Experience with prompt engineering and LLM integration
• Experience evaluating and tuning search relevance and AI-generated responses
• Understanding of hallucination mitigation, grounding, citations, confidence scoring, and responsible AI practices
• Experience integrating AI/search services with REST APIs, Azure services, or enterprise applications
• Familiarity with Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Graph API, and Microsoft 365 environments
• Experience with Git-based source control, CI/CD, testing, and deployment practices
• Understanding of secure cloud development, identity management, and least-privilege access
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, communication, and technical documentation skills
• Ability to work closely with team and Government stakeholders
• Ability to successfully complete required FLRA personnel security vetting

Technologies

• Azure AI Search
• Azure OpenAI
• Azure AI Document Intelligence
• Embeddings
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Natural-language question answering
• Vector search
• Semantic search
• Python
• C#/.NET
• OpenAI APIs
• Microsoft SharePoint
• Microsoft Graph API
• Microsoft 365
• REST APIs
• Git-based source control
• CI/CD
• FedRAMP
• NIST SP 800-53

Preferred Certifications

• Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Engineer Associate
• Microsoft Applied Skills related to Azure AI Search, Azure OpenAI, or generative AI
• CompTIA Security+ or equivalent security certification

Location and Compensation

• Onsite: Peachtree Corners, GA
• Salary: USD 96,100 - 100,000 per year