Lead Software Engineer IV

Overview

At PNNL, our core capabilities are divided among major departments referred to as Directorates within the Lab. The Science & Technology directorates include National Security, Earth and Biological Sciences, Physical and Computational Sciences, and Energy and Environment. The AI and Data Analytics Division, part of the National Security Directorate, combines domain expertise and advanced hardware and software to deliver computational solutions for complex data and analytic challenges.

We are seeking an exceptional Lead Software Engineer to architect and build next‑generation AI systems at PNNL, spanning agentic AI platforms, petabyte‑scale data orchestration, and real‑time intelligence processing that define the future of national security technology. This role blends deep technical leadership with hands‑on AI/ML engineering, requiring both strategic vision and tactical excellence.

An experienced engineer who bridges infrastructure, AI/ML, and production software. You have built highly scalable systems from scratch, led impactful initiatives, and turned complex problems into solutions. You are comfortable architecting distributed systems processing terabytes per hour as well as fine‑tuning LLMs, and you bring startup agility to mission‑critical work.

• AI‑Native Systems:
  Agentic AI with dynamic reasoning, LLM orchestration (Lang Chain, Llama Index, Lang Graph), MLOps platforms, and multi‑modal reasoning pipelines.
• Scalable Infrastructure:
  Microservices across security enclaves, real‑time streaming (TB/hour), petabyte‑scale ETL, data lake/mesh architectures, and Kubernetes/CI‑CD for classified & edge environments.
• Production Systems:
  Secure AI deployments, observability across enclaves, ethical AI compliance, and geospatial/time‑series intelligence data fusion.
• Technical Leadership:
  Lead engineers on high‑impact ambiguous scope, drive architecture and strategy, build roadmaps from cutting‑edge research, and mentor teams.

• Engineering Leadership:
  Expert Python and another language (C#, Go, C++), proven track record establishing best practices, advanced CI/CD, and architecting distributed systems.
• AI/ML Architecture:
  Production agentic AI experience, deep expertise with PyTorch/Tensor Flow/JAX and LLM orchestration; advanced LLM optimization (LoRA/PEFT, RAG, fine‑tuning); end‑to‑end ML platform design.
• Cloud & Distributed Systems:
  Enterprise‑scale architecture across AWS, Azure, GCP;
  Docker, Kubernetes, IaC; event‑driven systems (Kafka, RabbitMQ); API design mastery (REST, GraphQL, gRPC); polyglot persistence (SQL/No
  
  SQL/warehouses).
• Data Platform Engineering:
  Cloud‑native pipelines & orchestration (Airflow, Prefect); data lakehouse architectures; distributed computing (Spark, Flink, Ray); petabyte‑scale optimization and modern data formats (Parquet, Iceberg, Delta).
• Leadership & Communication:
  Mentoring teams, articulating strategy to executives & stakeholders, balancing delivery with technical excellence, and driving cross‑functional collaboration.

This position is based in Richland, WA or Seattle, WA and requires an onsite presence Monday through Thursday, with Friday as required by business needs.

• PhD and 3 years of Software Engineering experience
• or MS/MA and 5 years of Software Engineering experience
• or BS/BA and 7 years of Software Engineering experience
• or AA and 16 years of Software Engineering experience in designing, architecting, programming, deploying, and automating software solutions in support of scientific research or consumer digital product development
• or HS/GED and 18 years of Software Engineering experience in designing, architecting, programming, deploying, and automating software solutions in support of scientific research or consumer digital product development
• Current, hands‑on software development experience using Python.

• Actively using Python and have been doing so for the previous five years.
• Expert‑level Python:
  Architecting production frameworks, libraries, and large multi‑language codebases at scale.
• Enterprise ETL/data platform leadership:
  Designing…