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AI Engineer, Special Programs - Top Secret Clearance

SpaceX· Starshield SI Engineering
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Palo Alto, CA$135k - $230kfull-timePosted 5mo ago

About the role

AI engineers work directly with end customers to own strategy, execution, and deployment of mission-critical AI solutions for U.S federal agencies, collaborating with product, research, infrastructure, and governance teams to deliver high-stakes projects with safety, transparency, and ethical standards.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and optimize integrations between AI frontier models (e.g., Grok family) and government systems, platforms, and data environments.
  • Identify pain points, scoping product specifications, and designing and building AI-powered software for government or enterprise use cases.
  • Benchmark models and develop evaluation frameworks to assess performance and address weaknesses, ensuring compliance with customer standards.
  • Enhancing model performance through system prompt tuning or fine-tuning, with an eye toward secure and scalable deployment.
  • Analyze request logs, prompt data, or system outputs to ensure reliability and audibility.
  • Build internal tooling to streamline workflows and automate repetitive tasks in secure environments.
  • Partner with agency stakeholders to understand requirements, prototype solutions, and iterate rapidly based on real-world feedback.
  • Ship production-grade code and features with a bias toward speed, simplicity, and measurable impact.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, mathematics, computer engineering, physics, or data science.
  • 1+ years of hands-on software engineering experience building scalable systems, APIs, or AI/ML applications.
  • Active Top-Secret or Top-Secret SCI.

Skills

Nice to have:Government/DoD/federal contracting experienceSoftware engineering (senior level potential)Python and/or TypeScriptSecure API design / HTTPProduction ML model deploymentEvaluation frameworks for AI systemsSDKs / developer documentationInfrastructure as code (Pulumi, Terraform)

Benefits

  • Long-term incentives (stock or options) and potential discretionary bonuses
  • Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
  • 401(k) retirement plan
  • Short and long-term disability insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Paid parental leave
  • 3 weeks of paid vacation plus 10+ paid holidays per year
  • Paid sick leave per company policy
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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