About Careertakes

👉 Important disclosure: Careertakes is a third-party recruiting platform supporting this hiring process. If selected, you will be employed directly by our client, IT.

Applicants for this role may also receive access to additional matched opportunities through the Careertakes platform.

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What You’ll Do

Confidential Client is hiring an AI Solutions Engineer — Agent Development to design, build, and iterate AI-enabled prototypes, agents, and integrations that solve real operational problems. You'll turn loosely defined mission needs into working software, prototypes, and reusable components that can mature into secure, operational capabilities.

• Develop and maintain AI agents, prototypes, workflow automations, software components, integrations, and proofs-of-concept.
• Use Python for development, testing, debugging, and maintenance of AI-enabled services and components; apply C++ where solution performance or environment requires it.
• Design and refine agent workflows, prompts, tool use, retrieval approaches, human-in-the-loop review steps, and output-evaluation methods.
• Integrate applications with APIs, structured and unstructured data sources, cloud services, knowledge repositories, and internal business systems.
• Assist with data preparation, workflow mapping, API development, UI components, and system integration tasks as required.
• Collaborate with engineering, cloud, cybersecurity, data, program, and customer teams during design sessions, demos, testing, and user feedback cycles.
• Build, test, document, and refine solutions following security and quality standards; contribute reusable code, templates, and implementation guides.
• Support evaluation of AI-enabled solutions for functionality, usability, reliability, and limitations.
• Maintain awareness of emerging AI tools, LLM practices, agent frameworks, and software-development techniques.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

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Qualifications

• 1–4 years experience in software engineering, application development, data engineering, automation, cloud engineering, AI development, or a related technical field. Internships, academic work, open-source contributions, and personal projects are considered.
• Demonstrated proficiency in Python is required.
• Experience with C++ is required or the demonstrated ability to become productive in C++ quickly.
• Practical exposure to APIs, JSON, databases, data structures, web services, and system integration.
• Experience or exposure to generative AI, large language models (LLMs), agent frameworks, prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, or workflow automation.
• Evidence of personally building software, applications, prototypes, automations, or AI agents beyond coursework is strongly preferred.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a bias toward experimentation and delivering working results.
• Ability to learn new tools and technical concepts quickly and apply them to practical use cases.
• Comfortable working collaboratively and accepting technical direction, feedback, and coaching.
• Interest in customer-facing delivery, mission-oriented work, and solving operational problems.
• Prior experience in federal, public-sector, healthcare, defense, intelligence, or other regulated environments is preferred but not required.

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Education, Certificates & Clearances

• Bachelor’s degree required — preferably in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Data Science, AI, or a related field. Relevant coursework, boot camps, or certifications are a plus.
• Relevant entry-level technical certifications (e.g., AWS Cloud Practitioner, Azure Fundamentals, Google Cloud Digital Leader, Python/AI certificates) are preferred but not required.
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. security clearance is required; an active DoD Top Secret clearance is desired.

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Location, Compensation & Additional Details

• Location: Herndon, VA (onsite / hybrid as required by program needs).
• Salary: $91,000 – $134,000 per year.
• Employment type: Full-time.
• Limited travel may be required based on customer and program needs.
• Work environment: routine office environment; may require lifting up to 10 lbs and occasional extended hours.
• Reasonable accommodations will be provided where applicable and available.

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Notes

This role suits engineers who are builders at heart: comfortable working through ambiguity, testing ideas with users, and iterating quickly. Confidential Client values practical experience, demonstrated software work, and a pragmatic approach to delivering secure, maintainable AI capabilities.

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Equal Opportunity & Hiring Transparency

Careertakes and our client are Equal Opportunity Employers committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce. We prohibit discrimination or harassment of any kind. To support a fair and efficient hiring process, AI tools may be used to assist with application review or resume screening. These tools do not replace human decision-making. Final hiring decisions are made by people.

If you have questions about how your data is used, please contact us directly.