AI Engineer
Hybrid (United States)$130k - $150kFull-Time, W-2Posted 5mo ago
About the role
AI Engineer role focused on building production-grade agentic AI systems for federal and commercial clients, with emphasis on MCP-based integrations, RAG pipelines, and tool-enabled agents. Not a research role; responsibilities include designing, shipping, and maintaining AI-backed applications with strong attention to safety, observability, and responsible AI practices for government use.
Responsibilities
- Design and build agentic systems — multi-step agents that plan, call tools, retrieve context, and take action with appropriate human-in-the-loop checkpoints
- Build MCP servers and clients to securely expose client data, internal tools, and APIs to LLMs in a standardized, auditable way
- Ship LLM-powered applications: copilots, document intelligence, search, summarization, and workflow automation
- Design and maintain RAG pipelines — chunking, embeddings, vector stores, retrieval, reranking, and grounding
- Integrate model APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, open-weight models) and select models based on quality, latency, and cost
- Develop evals and observability for agents and AI features in production
- Apply prompt engineering, structured outputs, function/tool calling, and guardrails for predictable agent behavior
- Write production Python backends and APIs exposing AI capabilities to web and mobile clients
- Collaborate with engineers, designers, and product to scope AI functionality
- Help shape responsible AI practices for federal use — privacy, security, auditability, human oversight
Qualifications
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 1 year shipping LLM-based or AI-powered features to production
- Hands-on experience designing or building agentic systems — tool calling, multi-step reasoning, planning loops, or agent orchestration
- Working knowledge of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and familiarity with agent/tool standards
- Strong Python and backend API development experience (FastAPI, Flask, or similar)
- Hands-on experience with at least one major LLM provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Vertex, or open-weight models via vLLM/Ollama)
- Working knowledge of RAG — embeddings, vector databases (pgvector, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, or similar), and retrieval evaluation
- Comfort with prompt engineering, structured outputs (JSON schemas), and tool/function calling
- Experience writing evals for non-deterministic systems
- Solid SQL and experience with relational and unstructured data
- Familiarity with at least one cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
- Git, code reviews, and modern collaborative workflows
- Strong written and verbal communication — ability to explain AI tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders
Skills
Required:PythonAgentic systems designModel Context Protocol (MCP)RAG
Benefits
- Competitive salary range ($130,000 - $200,000+) based on role requirements and experience
- Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance
- Up to 20+ days of PTO annually
- 401(k) retirement savings plan
- FSA/HSA and commuter benefit options
- Professional development opportunities, certifications, and continuous learning support
- Company-provided technology and access to productivity and AI tools
- Additional bonus based on performance
Last updated Jul 8, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
About BLEN, Inc.
We help you build better digital tools
BLEN is an 8(a) and veteran-owned digital agency that uses human-centered design and modern technology to help leading federal agencies, non-profits and enterprises to deliver compelling digital solutions.
Digital ServicesEmerging Technology (ML/AI, RPA)Digital ModernizationWeb/Mobile Design and Development
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