AI Engineer Software (Level 2 or 3)

About the role

The Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Sector in Space Park Redondo Beach/El Segundo, CA is seeking a highly motivated AI Software Engineer to join their team. This role involves working closely with senior AI subject matter experts, designing, developing, and delivering AI solutions to meet mission and sector needs, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to deploy machine learning algorithms.

Responsibilities

• Build and fine-tune retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, agentic AI pipelines, and large language model (LLM) solutions that solve concrete business problems.
• Work with product owners, data scientists, and senior engineers to ship reliable, scalable AI services.
• Define, develop, and deliver AI solutions to meet mission and sector needs.
• Design, develop, document, test, and debug applications software and systems that contain logical and mathematical solutions.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy machine learning algorithms for testing and is in production systems.
• Maintain understanding of the cutting-edge technologies in AI/ML.
• Rapid Prototyping & Delivery – Turn medium-priority use-case specifications into working AI prototypes within 2-4 weeks and iterate to production quality.
• RAG, Agentic AI, and LLM Development – Design and implement retrieval-augmented generation pipelines and agentic workflows integrating pretrained LLMs (e.g., GPT-4/5/OSS, Llama) through APIs and self-hosted model deployments.
• Model Integration – Embed fine-tuned models into existing micro-service architectures (REST/GraphQL, gRPC) and expose them via APIs or internal SDKs.
• Performance & Reliability – Set up monitoring, logging, and automated testing (unit, integration, latency) for AI services; troubleshoot model drift and latency issues.
• Data Preparation – Collaborate with data engineers to curate, clean, and annotate domain-specific datasets for fine-tuning and evaluation.
• Documentation & Knowledge Sharing – Write clear technical documentation, create example notebooks, and mentor junior teammates on AI best practices.
• Continuous Improvement – Stay current with the latest LLM research, open-source tools, and industry trends; propose upgrades to the AI stack.

Requirements

• For Level 2 consideration: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related STEM field and 2 years of relevant experience or Master's degree in Computer Science or related STEM field with relevant entry level experience.
• For Level 3 consideration: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related STEM degree and 5 years of relevant experience or Master's degree in Computer Science or related STEM field and 3 years of relevant experience.
• Entry-level professional AI/software engineering experience; demonstrated ability to ship production-grade code.
• Ability to obtain and maintain final US Government Secret Clearance.
• Active and final US Government Secret Clearance.

Qualifications

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently on moderately scoped projects.
• Demonstrated ability to carry out rapid prototyping and proof-of-concept demonstrations using novel AI methods to solve real-world challenges.
• Able to effectively communicate system properties and results to technical staff as well as non-technical management and leadership stakeholders.
• Proficiency in Python (including libraries such as PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, LangGraph).
• Familiarity with RAG and agentic AI concepts: vector stores (e.g., Pinecone, FAISS, Milvus), embeddings, similarity search, prompt engineering, function calling or tool use, structured outputs.
• Experience developing AI solutions using LLMs, Agentic AI, MLOps pipelines, Cloud services, ETL, evaluation of AI solution, services, containers and container orchestration.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Understanding of software engineering best practices: version control (Git), CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, code reviews.

Skills

• Python (including libraries such as PyTorch, Hugging Face Transformers, LangChain, LangGraph).
• RAG and agentic AI concepts: vector stores (e.g., Pinecone, FAISS, Milvus), embeddings, similarity search, prompt engineering, function calling or tool use, structured outputs.
• Experience developing AI solutions using LLMs, Agentic AI, MLOps pipelines, Cloud services, ETL, evaluation of AI solution, services, containers and container orchestration.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Understanding of software engineering best practices: version control (Git), CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, code reviews.

Benefits

Northrop Grumman offers a comprehensive benefits package including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.

Pay

Primary Level Salary Range: $111,000.00 - $166,600.00
Secondary Level Salary Range: $137,800.00 - $206,800.00

Schedule

Travel: Yes, 10% of the Time