Machine Learning/AI Engineer

Mind Moves is a women-owned Washington, D.C.-based firm helping businesses and governments embrace, build, and deploy “human in the loop” AI solutions to elevate mission and value. We specialize in responsibly developed machine learning and AI (predictive and generative) products and services, having delivered impactful solutions for Fortune 500 corporations and large government entities in healthcare, supply chain management, financial services, and life sciences.

About the role

You will guide cross-functional teams—including members from various National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes or centers—as they move use cases from idea to Minimum Viable Product (MVP). These use cases typically focus on medical research or public health for internal or external audiences. You’ll collaborate with client leads, business operators, fellow consultants, and the Mind Moves project team, while working closely with world-leading scientists at NIH.

This role offers the opportunity to:

• Make a measurable impact on scientific discovery and public health
• Gain hands-on experience with frontier AI/ML technologies
• Operate at the intersection of health, data, and AI in a creative, mission-driven environment

Responsibilities

• Deliver “knowledge sessions” to teams to build working familiarity with AI/ML concepts
• Assist in data engineering and preparation tasks to enable teams without engineering resources to utilize their data or new data sources
• Rapidly develop proof-of-concept AI prototypes and functional demos to validate use cases and accelerate stakeholder buy-in
• Demonstrate iterative value creation across team capabilities
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across federal agencies and supporting partners
• Design solutions with defined requirements while innovating “outside the box” and accounting for risk
• Articulate the art of the possible and lead innovation at the frontier of AI

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience in Data Science, Machine Learning, or AI Engineering
• Azure expertise: deep, hands-on experience with Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and the M365 ecosystem (Teams, SharePoint, Copilot); general cloud experience is not sufficient
• Production-level RAG implementation: retrieval strategy, relevance ranking, chunking, access-controlled data filtering, and evaluation (non-negotiable core requirement)
• Strong GenAI/LLM depth: prompt engineering, model selection and strategy, structured outputs, evaluation frameworks, and guardrails
• Demonstrated experience designing and orchestrating agentic AI workflows using LangChain, AutoGen, or Microsoft Semantic Kernel
• Knowledge graph / graph database experience (Neo4j or Azure Cosmos DB with graph API): entity modeling, relationship design, query, and visualization
• Databricks and MCP integration experience
• Data engineering and ETL: pipeline design, API integration, backend development
• AI governance aligned with NIST AI RMF, NIH/HHS requirements, including human-in-the-loop workflow design and RBAC in federal environments
• Proficiency in Python, PyTorch, and SQL
• Background or experience in biomedical, bioinformatics, or life sciences preferred
• Experience taking solutions from proof of concept through MVP to production deployment
• Strong communication skills; ability to lead knowledge sessions with non-technical stakeholders
• Eastern Time Zone required; Maryland/Virginia/DC area preferred

Pay

Proposals accepted in the range of $80–90/hour.

Schedule

12-month contract, 40 hours/week, 100% remote (EST required, DC metro area preferred).