AI / Data Engineer

Job Family:
Data Science Consulting

Travel Required:
Up to 25%

Clearance Required:
Active Secret

Guidehouse is seeking an AI Engineer to support the design, development, validation, and deployment of production-grade AI-enabled applications for DoW Federal clients. This role will translate operational workflows, mission needs, and enterprise data assets into secure, scalable, and reliable AI systems.

The AI Engineer will work closely with functional SMEs, architects, data scientists, product managers, and technical delivery teams to build AI-enabled applications, retrieval workflows, evaluation frameworks, and decision-support capabilities. This role is focused on delivering working systems, not research prototypes, and must support explainable, auditable, and operationally reliable AI outputs in regulated and mission-sensitive environments.

What You Will Do

• Design, build, and deploy AI-enabled applications that support real operational workflows and decision-making for DoW, federal, and enterprise environments.
• Develop application logic that integrates AI models, APIs, data pipelines, user interfaces, and enterprise systems.
• Implement retrieval-augmented generation, semantic search, embeddings, vector databases, prompt strategies, and agent-based workflows where appropriate.
• Integrate structured and unstructured enterprise data sources into AI-enabled applications.
• Build orchestration workflows that connect foundation models, machine learning services, tools, APIs, and secure enterprise environments.
• Develop evaluation frameworks to measure AI output quality, grounding, accuracy, traceability, and failure modes.
• Implement guardrails, validation checks, fallback logic, and human-in-the-loop review points to support reliable AI behavior.
• Support training, tuning, evaluation, and validation of AI or machine learning models using enterprise data while ensuring outputs remain defensible, explainable, and aligned to approved methodologies.
• Develop secure APIs, backend services, dashboards, visualizations, and integration components for AI-enabled analytic tools and decision-support platforms.
• Implement monitoring, logging, observability, model performance tracking, and cost controls for AI systems in operation.
• Advise on model transparency, explainability, auditability, data governance, information assurance, and access controls required for secure DoW and federal deployment.
• Collaborate with functional SMEs to translate business needs, mission requirements, workflow requirements, review expectations, and operational constraints into technical requirements.
• Contribute reusable AI components, accelerators, reference architectures, and delivery patterns for future enterprise and federal AI implementations.
• Support demonstrations, pilots, proofs of value, testing, deployment readiness, and user acceptance activities with internal and client stakeholders.

What You Will Need

• ship Required
• An ACTIVE and MAINTAINED "SECRET" Federal or DoD security clearance.
• Bachelor's degree obtained or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience designing, building, or deploying AI-enabled applications, analytic tools, decision-support systems, or machine learning solutions.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including APIs, backend services, data pipelines, system integration, and production deployment practices.
• Applied experience with machine learning, generative AI, large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, embeddings, vector databases, semantic search, or prompt engineering.
• Experience deploying applications or analytic services in cloud or enterprise environments using CI/CD, version control, testing, and secure development practices.

What Would Be Nice To Have

• Experience supporting DoW, federal, national security, or large enterprise technology modernization programs.
• Experience developing or deploying AI-enabled applications in secure DoW or federal cloud environments.
• Experience with AI-enabled analytics, predictive modeling, forecasting, scenario analysis, workflow automation, or decision-support platforms.
• Experience implementing model transparency, explainability, auditability, and traceability controls for AI-generated recommendations or analytic outputs.
• Experience designing dashboards, visualizations, or user-facing applications for complex analytical workflows.
• Understanding of information assurance, cybersecurity, access controls, and secure deployment considerations for DoW, federal, or enterprise environments.
• Experience with Python, FastAPI, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Azure AI, AWS, Databricks, Snowflake, vector databases, containerized deployments, or related AI engineering tools.
• Experience contributing reusable components, accelerators, or reference architectures for enterprise AI delivery.
• Prior experience supporting demonstrations, pilots, proofs of value, testing, deployment readiness, or user acceptance activities with DoW or federal client stakeholders.
• Ability to move AI solutions from concept or prototype into production-ready services.
• Understanding of evaluation approaches for AI systems, including accuracy testing, grounding, validation, failure analysis, and human review workflows.
• Familiarity with data quality challenges, structured and unstructured data integration, and enterprise data governance.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to functional SMEs, product owners, architects, and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong structured problem-solving skills and ability to design systems that are reliable, explainable, secure, and operationally usable.
• Comfort operating in regulated, audit-sensitive, federal, or DoW environments.

Estimated Support Level

Full-time support, approximately 1.0 FTE during solution design, data integration, AI application development, evaluation, testing, deployment, and user acceptance. Support level may flex based on delivery phase, with heavier involvement during architecture, build, evaluation, and production readiness activities.

The annual salary range for this position is $106,000.00-$176,000.00. Compensation decisions depend on a wide range of factors, including but not limited to skill sets, experience and training, security clearances, licensure and certifications, and other business and organizational needs.

What We Offer:

Guidehouse offers a comprehensive, total rewards package that includes competitive compensation and a flexible benefits package that reflects our commitment to creating a diverse and supportive workplace.

Benefits include:

• Medical, Rx, Dental & Vision Insurance
• Personal and Family Sick Time & Company Paid Holidays
• Position may be eligible for a discretionary variable incentive bonus
• Parental Leave and Adoption Assistance
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Basic Life & Supplemental Life
• Health Savings Account, Dental/Vision & Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts
• Short-Term & Long-Term Disability
• Student Loan PayDown
• Tuition Reimbursement, Personal Development & Learning Opportunities
• Skills Development & Certifications
• Employee Referral Program
• Corporate Sponsored Events & Community Outreach
• Emergency Back-Up Childcare Program
• Mobility Stipend

About Guidehouse

Guidehouse is an Equal Opportunity Employer-Protected Veterans, Individuals with Disabilities or any other basis protected by law, ordinance, or regulation.

Guidehouse will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable law or ordinance including the Fair Chance Ordinance of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

If you have visited our website for information about employment opportunities, or to apply for a position, and you require an accommodation, please contact Guidehouse Recruiting at 1- or via email at All information you provide will be kept confidential and will be used only to the extent required to provide needed reasonable accommodation.

All communication regarding recruitment for a Guidehouse position will be sent from Guidehouse email domains including @guidehouse.com or Correspondence received by an applicant from any other domain should be considered unauthorized and will not be honored by Guidehouse. Note that Guidehouse will never charge a fee or require a money transfer at any stage of the recruitment process and does not collect fees from educational institutions for participation in a recruitment event. Never provide your banking information to a third party purporting to need that information to proceed in the hiring process.

If any person or organization demands money related to a job opportunity with Guidehouse, please report the matter to Guidehouse's Ethics Hotline. If you want to check the validity of correspondence you have received, please contact Guidehouse is not responsible for losses incurred (monetary or otherwise) from an applicant's dealings with unauthorized third parties.

Guidehouse does not accept unsolicited resumes through or from search firms or staffing agencies. All unsolicited resumes will be considered the property of Guidehouse and Guidehouse will not be obligated to pay a placement fee.