Data & ML Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Data & ML Engineer (AI): Building the data and model layer for an AI-enabled decision-support system with an accent on probabilistic record matching, calibrated scoring, provenance, and grounded generation. Focus on designing traceable machine-learning workflows, handling low-signal operational data, and building secure pipelines that support defensible decisions in a controlled government cloud environment.

Location: Fully remote within the USA, with occasional travel of up to 25% to DEFCON AI headquarters, customer sites, and vendor facilities. US citizenship, an active US Secret clearance, favorable investigation, and CAC eligibility are required from the start.

Salary: $150,000–$200,000, plus bonus and equity.

Company

hirify.global is an incubation firm building technology-led companies across healthcare, cybersecurity, and national security, including DEFCON AI.

What you will do

• Design entity, record, and relationship data models with complete source provenance.
• Build probabilistic matching, deduplication, clustering, relevance scoring, calibration, and abstention policies.
• Implement embeddings, vector retrieval, language-model integrations, structured outputs, and source-grounded explanations.
• Develop secure ingestion and transformation pipelines for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.
• Implement validation, lineage, audit logging, source-drift detection, telemetry, model packaging, serving, versioning, and rollback.
• Document technical decisions and deliver changes through a gated release process in an accredited environment.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, data architecture, applied machine learning, ML engineering, or production analytics engineering.
• Strong Python and SQL skills with experience working with large, imperfect operational datasets.
• Experience delivering systems for sustained operational use rather than exploratory analysis alone.
• Ability to explain technical decisions to stakeholders who must defend the resulting decisions.
• US citizenship and an active US Secret clearance are required; CAC eligibility and a favorable investigation are required from the start.
• Willingness to travel up to 25% to customer sites, headquarters, and vendor facilities.

Nice to have

• Active Top Secret clearance and experience with probabilistic matching, record linkage, identity management, or graph data modeling.
• Experience with PostgreSQL, pgvector, scikit-learn, XGBoost, PyTorch, or graph algorithms in production.
• Production retrieval-augmented generation, prompt and schema design, self-hosted models, fine-tuning, adapters, or custom embeddings.
• Experience with AWS Glue, Airflow, dbt, Spark, Kafka, NiFi, synthetic data generation, or federal DevSecOps environments.
• Experience with responsible AI practices such as model cards, fairness testing, monitoring, and NIST AI RMF.

Culture & Benefits

• Fully remote, results-based work environment with flexible scheduling.
• 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and families.
• Unlimited PTO with management approval.
• 14 weeks of fully paid parental leave.
• Professional development opportunities, equity incentives, optional 401(k), FSA, and mental health benefits.