Senior Applied AI Engineer

Groundswell helps clients turn ambiguous business needs into dependable, end-to-end AI capabilities that can be deployed with governance, testing, and operational visibility. This Senior Applied AI Engineer role is client-facing and combines rigorous AI engineering with clear communication to support stakeholders from discovery through production.

Responsibilities

• Lead discovery with business and technical stakeholders to understand the workflow, the decision supported, and what “acceptable results” look like today.
• Define measurable success criteria before building, including accuracy targets, human review thresholds, acceptance conditions, and the definition of failure.
• Recommend against AI when a simpler solution is the right answer, including rules, process changes, or improved interfaces, and identify early when those are the better path.
• Select the appropriate AI pattern for the problem, such as extraction, classification, summarization, retrieval, or an agentic workflow, instead of defaulting to the most complex option.
• Make and defend architecture decisions for where work runs, balancing quality, cost, latency, security, and authorization constraints.
• Build the complete capability beyond the AI components, including prompt and retrieval design, structured outputs, tool and function definitions, API integration, data handling, error states, and the user interface.
• Create evaluation sets from real data and iterate using measured results rather than intuition.
• Determine whether a capability is ready for deployment and identify when it is not.
• Operationalize solutions in the client environment, including governance, logging, and traceability requirements.
• Produce clear documentation covering what the solution does, known limitations, how it was validated, and what to do when incorrect results occur.
• Monitor quality, cost, latency, and drift after launch, and optimize as better or less expensive options become available.
• Set the direction clients cannot yet articulate by demonstrating what is possible, shaping the roadmap, and supporting decisions with working proof.
• Raise the technical level of the team through mentoring, reviewing work, and strengthening engineering judgment and output.
• Contribute reusable patterns so projects do not start from scratch each time.
• Move across client delivery, internal product work, rapid proofs of concept, and internal enablement as needed.

Requirements

• 7+ years building and shipping production software.
• 2+ years hands-on experience building applications integrating large language models, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, structured extraction, tool use, and agent patterns.
• Experience evaluating AI system quality, including building test sets, defining metrics, and making deployment decisions based on evidence.
• Strong programming ability in a general-purpose language such as Python, TypeScript, or SQL, including API integration and working with imperfect data across the full application.
• Ability to lead requirements conversations with non-technical stakeholders and translate needs into a technical approach.
• Sound judgment on tradeoffs between accuracy, cost, latency, and complexity, with the ability to explain tradeoffs to engineers and executives.
• Excellent written communication for client-facing documentation and design rationale.
• Ability to work with minimal direction in ambiguous situations, surfacing problems worth solving and driving an approach to decision.
• Track record of improving other engineers’ capability, with or without a formal leadership title.
• U.S. Citizenship required, with ability to obtain and maintain any federal government background investigation, suitability determination, or security clearance required for client engagements.

Technologies

• Python, TypeScript, SQL
• AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI
• Appian, OutSystems, Mendix
• Microsoft Power Platform, ServiceNow, Salesforce

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans
• Flexible Spending Account
• 4% 401K Match (immediate vesting)
• Paid Time Off
• Tuition reimbursement, certification programs, and professional development
• Flexible work schedule
• On-site gym and childcare option

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Data Science, Business Analytics, Mathematics, or Computer Science.
• Experience with low-code or application platforms such as Appian, OutSystems, Mendix, Microsoft Power Platform, ServiceNow, or Salesforce.
• Public sector or regulated-industry delivery experience, including compliance and authorization processes.
• Experience with cloud AI services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure OpenAI.
• Familiarity with LLM evaluation or observability tooling.
• Prior consulting, solutions engineering, professional services, or embedded client work.

Note: Groundswell does not accept unsolicited resumes through or from search firms or staffing agencies. All unsolicited resumes will be considered the property of Groundswell, and Groundswell will not be obligated to pay a placement fee.

Disability Accessibility Accommodation: If you are an individual with a disability and would like to request a reasonable accommodation as part of the employment selection process, please contact us at [email protected] or 703-639-1777.