About this opportunity
TheDriveGroup lists this Founding Ai Engineer opportunity in arlington, Virginia. Review the employer’s description below for duties, qualifications and application requirements.
Job description
We’re partnering with a high-growth software company building advanced open-source intelligence technology for complex, real-world intelligence environments.
If you are considering sending an application, make sure to hit the apply button below after reading through the entire description.
They’re making their first dedicated AI Engineering hire in the US - a key appointment that will work directly with the Co-Founder and senior Product leadership, with significant scope to influence the direction of their AI capability as the US engineering team grows.
This isn’t a role focused on experimentation or building another AI proof of concept.
You’ll be building production AI systems, Generative AI and agentic capabilities directly into an established software platform, solving complex problems across large volumes of structured and unstructured information.
Important - US citizenship is required for this position
Location : Arlington, VA
On-Site is a strong preference
Salary: $170k-$200k Base + Benefits (benchmarking)
What You'll Do
Design, build and productionise AI systems, GenAI and agentic AI capabilities
Develop LLM-powered features and AI agents that solve complex, real-world intelligence problems
Integrate new AI capabilities into an established enterprise software platform
Take ideas from early prototype through to scalable, reliable production systems
Work across AI architecture, orchestration, evaluation, monitoring and performance
Build and deploy cloud-based AI services across AWS/GCP environments
Work with large volumes of complex structured and unstructured information
Partner closely with Product, Software Engineering and Data Science teams
Work directly with the Co-Founder and Head of Product on the direction of the AI capability
Help establish the foundations for a US AI Engineering team expected to grow to around five people
What You'll Bring
5+ years' experience across Software Engineering, AI Engineering or Machine Learning Engineering
Strong software engineering fundamentals and experience building production applications or systems
Commercial experience building and deploying AI/ML systems into production
Hands-on experience with LLMs, Generative AI and/or agentic AI
Strong Python development skills
Experience integrating AI capabilities into broader software products and platforms
Cloud engineering experience across AWS, GCP or similar
Understanding of AI evaluation, monitoring, reliability, scalability and performance
Experience with modern AI frameworks, APIs and tooling
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work autonomously in an evolving environment
Experience with Java/Spring, NLP, RAG, information retrieval or large-scale data platforms would be highly regarded
This is a chance to get in at the beginning of a company's US AI Engineering capability, while still having the backing, product and customers of an established international software business.
You'll work directly with senior leadership, have genuine influence over technical direction and help shape the engineering capability as the US team expands. xzgxqkn
Most importantly, you'll be working on AI systems that actually make it into production — tackling difficult engineering problems across GenAI, agents, large-scale information processing and intelligence software.
Worksite address
arlington, VA, 22201, US
Who can apply
Review the original listing for work authorization, qualifications and employer requirements.