Staff Applied ML Engineer, Federal/National Security
Redcellpartners · Remote (USA), Washington D.C. Area Preferred
About this role
## Staff Applied ML Engineer, Federal/National Security **About the Role** Red Cell Federal is hiring a Staff Applied ML Engineer to build and deploy production AI systems for federal and national security missions. You'll work across LLMs, model fine-tuning, agentic systems, RAG, evaluation, and inference—turning rapidly evolving AI capabilities into reliable software for real mission environments. **What You'll Do** • Build production LLM-powered applications, AI agents, and agentic workflows • Develop and own model evaluation, fine-tuning, adaptation, and experimentation pipelines • Determine when to use prompting, RAG, fine-tuning, specialized models, or combinations • Build rigorous eval systems for model and agent quality, reliability, and task completion • Develop retrieval and context systems across structured and unstructured mission data • Optimize models and inference for production environments • Deploy and improve models based on real-world performance and user feedback • Partner with Forward Deployed Engineers and customers to translate mission requirements into production AI • Turn solutions into reusable platform capabilities **What We're Looking For** • Significant experience building ML/AI systems and deploying in production • Hands-on experience with modern LLMs and foundation models • Deep expertise in several areas: LLM fine-tuning, model evaluation, RAG, agentic systems, model serving, embeddings, synthetic data, or AI reliability • Ability to move between ML experimentation and production engineering • Can operate independently against ambiguous technical problems • Interest in working close to users and seeing AI performance in real operational workflows **Requirements** • U.S. citizenship required • Active Secret or Top-Secret Security Clearance required **Location & Compensation** Washington, DC / Northern Virginia preferred. May require regular customer-facing work, onsite meetings, and travel. **Salary:** $180,000–$240,000 + bonus + equity **Benefits** • 100% employer-paid health care (medical, dental, vision) • Paid parental leave (14 weeks) • Unlimited PTO • Professional development opportunities • 401(k), FSA, and equity incentives • Mental health benefits and wellness programs
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