AI Engineer

Summary

JST develops technology solutions that support mission outcomes for federal customers. The AI Engineer will help build a new AI-powered product across the full stack, including cloud infrastructure, application services, data workflows, user interfaces, and operational tooling. The role involves designing dependable agentic systems, shipping product capabilities, evaluating AI approaches, and supporting software reliability and operations.

Responsibilities

• Use advanced AI coding and engineering harnesses to turn product requirements, prototypes, and technical designs into tested production software
• Build complete product capabilities across cloud infrastructure, backend services, APIs, data pipelines, web applications, and user-facing experiences
• Design agentic systems that can plan work, use tools, coordinate workflows, retain appropriate context, and automate repeatable product and operational tasks
• Implement the controls that make AI systems dependable, including human approval points, permissions, evaluations, observability, failure handling, and cost and latency measurement
• Work with product leaders and domain experts to understand real workflows, identify the smallest useful release, and refine the product from user feedback
• Own vertical slices of the product from design through deployment and support, with guidance and review from the Head of AI Engineering
• Evaluate models, prompting approaches, retrieval patterns, and tool-use designs against practical measures of quality, safety, speed, and cost
• Write clear tests, technical documentation, runbooks, and support notes so that the product can be operated and improved by the broader team
• Investigate software issues, improve reliability, and turn recurring support needs into better product behavior or safe automation

Skills

• A recently completed or soon-to-be-completed master's or doctoral degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, software engineering, data science, robotics, human-computer interaction, or a closely related technical field
• Strong programming fundamentals and practical experience in at least one modern language
• A working understanding of APIs, databases, version control, testing, debugging, and the core concepts behind cloud or distributed applications
• Evidence that you can take an ambiguous problem, break it into manageable steps, and finish a working project. Academic, research, startup, open-source, and professional projects all count
• Clear written and verbal communication, intellectual curiosity, and comfort asking questions when requirements or evidence are incomplete
• Good product judgment: you consider the user's workflow, usability, reliability, and support needs alongside the technical implementation
• Exposure to product development through an engineering, research, design, startup, internship, co-op, or customer-facing project
• A previous product-management title is not required
• Two to three years of relevant industry experience
• Candidates with less experience and an unusually strong record of building and shipping will be considered
• Python, TypeScript, or JavaScript experience is especially relevant
• Hands-on work with large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, agent frameworks, tool calling, AI evaluations, or AI-assisted software-development workflows
• Experience with a major cloud platform, infrastructure as code, serverless systems, containers, CI/CD, or production monitoring
• Experience building modern web interfaces or collaborating on UX, design systems, accessibility, and user research
• Interest in privacy, security, responsible AI, and the demands of enterprise or government software

Qualifications

Must Haves

• A recently completed or soon-to-be-completed master's or doctoral degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, software engineering, data science, robotics, human-computer interaction, or a closely related technical field
• Strong programming fundamentals and practical experience in at least one modern language
• A working understanding of APIs, databases, version control, testing, debugging, and the core concepts behind cloud or distributed applications
• Evidence that you can take an ambiguous problem, break it into manageable steps, and finish a working project. Academic, research, startup, open-source, and professional projects all count
• Clear written and verbal communication, intellectual curiosity, and comfort asking questions when requirements or evidence are incomplete
• Good product judgment: you consider the user's workflow, usability, reliability, and support needs alongside the technical implementation
• Exposure to product development through an engineering, research, design, startup, internship, co-op, or customer-facing project
• A previous product-management title is not required

Nice to Haves

• Two to three years of relevant industry experience
• candidates with less experience and an unusually strong record of building and shipping will be considered
• Python, TypeScript, or JavaScript experience is especially relevant
• Hands-on work with large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, agent frameworks, tool calling, AI evaluations, or AI-assisted software-development workflows
• Experience with a major cloud platform, infrastructure as code, serverless systems, containers, CI/CD, or production monitoring
• Experience building modern web interfaces or collaborating on UX, design systems, accessibility, and user research
• Interest in privacy, security, responsible AI, and the demands of enterprise or government software

Benefits

• Full-time remote, project-based position
• Collaborative work environment
• Employee development support