Software Engineer, AI Engineer (Applied​/Software), Backend Developer

BT-331 – Software Engineer – SME

Location:

Chantilly, VA (fully on-site, no remote option)

Please do NOT apply if you do not have an active Poly clearance. Those without a Poly will not be considered.

• Participate in all Lean Agile scrums, sprints and grooming sessions.
• Consult and coordinate appropriately for problem resolution, task scheduling, new resource requirements, and task clarification.
• Work in partnership with an integrated team of staff and contractors.
• Understand the cloud environments, such as AWS or Azure.
• Coordinate and collaborate with security, operations, engineering, testing and other teams to provide system information and technical support.
• Design, develop and modify software systems.
• Document and track vendor software roadmaps for software and patch version updates.
• Unit test their software and perform code.
• Design and implement scalable search and retrieval systems leveraging Elasticsearch.
• Develop and integrate LLM-powered capabilities, including Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines.

• Demonstrated experience working in Lean Agile Development environment.
• Demonstrated experience building or integrating LLM-based solutions, including RAG, semantic search, or AI-assisted retrieval systems.
• Demonstrated experience developing detailed design and associated deliverables.
• Demonstrated experience translating customer and system requirements into design.
• Demonstrated experience designing system interfaces.
• Demonstrated experience developing Single Page Applications using React (modern hooks-based architecture), HTML5, and CSS
  3.
• Demonstrated hands‑on experience developing RESTful APIs using Node.js and Express (or comparable modern backend frameworks).
• Demonstrated hands‑on experience with and troubleshooting of Internet and Web related protocols and technologies such as Tomcat, Nodejs, Web Services, or SSL.
• Demonstrated experience with testing platforms such as Jest or Karma.
• Demonstrated hands‑on experience working with Dev Ops tools such as Git, Jenkins, or Nexus.
• Demonstrated hands‑on experience with Elasticsearch (index design, querying, relevance tuning, and scaling).
• Demonstrated experience designing or implementing data pipelines to support search and/or RAG workflows (e.g., ingestion, chunking, embeddings, vector search).

• Demonstrated recent experience with the client's Lean Agile methodology.
• Experience evaluating, selecting, and integrating LLMs (e.g., OpenAI, open source models) into enterprise applications.
• Experience with vector databases, hybrid search (keyword + semantic), and relevance optimization.
• Ability to lead or mentor teams in adopting search + AI/LLM best practices (strong preference for candidates who can elevate team capability, not just contribute individually).