AI/ML Engineer III

About the role

Johnson Service Group (JSG) is seeking a contract position for an AI/ML Engineer III in Englewood, CO. The rate range for this role is $60-68/hr.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead for AI/ML development on a fast-paced team prototyping new technologies.
• Identify, test, develop and deploy new products to meet current and future operational challenges.
• Primary driver for AI/ML development projects focused on autonomy, perception systems, analytics.
• Develop technical requirements to meet high-level objectives and mentor JTF Sierra engineers.
• Bridge the gap between high-level vision provided by senior technology directors and help set & accomplish day-to-day execution.
• Ensure that AI/ML efforts are technically sound, aligned with mission objectives, and deliverable within rapid R&D timelines.
• Define architecture, technical direction, and technical requirements for new AI/ML initiatives and prototypes.
• Provide guidance on the selection of tools, frameworks, and infrastructure.
• Translate high-level conceptual guidance from leadership into actionable requirements, designs, roadmaps, and technical approaches.
• Collaborate with other engineer functions, hardware teams, product subject matter experts, and data scientists to align AI/ML solutions with mission-specific requirements and constraints.
• Shape system-level behavior and technical tradeoffs for AI/ML prototypes when requirements are evolving or ambiguous.
• Architect and build end-to-end AI/ML prototypes quickly, including data ingestion, feature engineering, training pipelines, model deployment and evaluation.
• Manage technical risks, develop mitigation paths, and scope prototype schedule and manpower requirements.
• Coordinate with existing product engineering teams to integrate AI/ML prototype components into existing SNC products and/or larger autonomous systems and platforms.
• Develop and oversee robust validation and testing frameworks to ensure that AI/ML models meet performance, safety, and compliance standards in real-world scenarios.
• Coach engineering peers, providing technical guidance and fostering a collaborative, innovative team environment.
• Stay current with emerging AI/ML technologies and propose innovative solutions to address new and existing challenges in the aerospace and defense domain.
• Communicate technical concepts, project progress, and outcomes to stakeholders, including leadership and external partners, in a clear and concise manner.
• Independently train, fine-tune, and optimize advanced AI architectures (including transformers) for complex applications.
• Apply a broad range of AI/ML techniques (supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement, generative) to solve domain-specific challenges.
• Lead the development and integration of signal processing, computer vision, and planning algorithms to advance autonomous system functionality.
• Design and execute large-scale simulations and modeling of AI/ML systems, ensuring scalability, performance, and robustness on CPU/GPU platforms.
• Prepare and execute demonstration plans, technical briefings, and trade studies/case studies for leadership and program stakeholders.

Qualifications

• Ability to mentor and “upskill” engineers with limited or developing AI/ML backgrounds.
• Experience delivering rapid prototypes or research models under tight schedule pressure.
• Comfort working with incomplete information and shaping requirements through experimentation.
• Strong communication skills for translating complex AI concepts to non-AI specialists.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, applied statistics, various engineering disciplines, or related STEM discipline, or 9 years of related experience.
• Relevant experience can be considered as a substitute for the required educational qualifications.
• Proficient in machine learning frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch) and skilled in implementing advanced AI/ML techniques, such as supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning (e.g., PPO, Actor/Critic), as well as working with generative AI models (e.g., transformers).
• Proficient in developing, deploying, and optimizing AI/ML models, including ANNs, CNNs, and RNNs, for production applications.
• Contributed to the design and scaling of systems for larger datasets or environments with moderate complexity.
• Strong proficiency in programming languages such as Python, C++, C#, or Java, with experience in building scalable AI/ML systems.
• Demonstrated experience leading teams or projects, including mentoring junior staff.
• Proven track record of deploying AI/ML models in production environments and optimizing them for real-world use cases.
• Knowledge of regulatory and cybersecurity requirements for AI/ML systems in aerospace and defense applications.
• Practical experience designing and implementing advanced ML techniques, such as clustering, dimensionality reduction, or generative modeling.
• Hands-on experience with GPU programming and using high-performance computing systems for ML workloads.
• Experience with at least one reinforcement learning or generative AI model (e.g., implementing GANs or Transformers).
• Able to analyze large-scale, heterogeneous datasets and apply advanced statistical and ML methods to real-world problems.
• Experience translating mission objectives into actionable system requirements, including HMI scenarios.
• Familiarity with hardware acceleration (e.g., CUDA, TensorRT) and introductory knowledge of edge AI or XAI.

Benefits

JSG offers medical, dental, vision, life insurance options, short-term disability, 401(k), weekly pay, and more.

Pay

$60-68/hr

Schedule

Weekly Pay