Note: This role requires an In-Person Interview
Company Overview
At 4A Consulting, we turn complexity into opportunity. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Baltimore, MD, we are a women-owned, boutique consulting firm specializing in delivering innovative, data-driven solutions to both the Federal Government and Fortune 500 clients. Our team blends deep industry knowledge with advanced technologies to design tailored strategies that drive measurable and sustainable outcomes. We pride ourselves on an agile, collaborative approach that helps organizations navigate challenges and seize emerging opportunities in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. At 4A, we don’t just deliver projects, we build trusted partnerships that empower our clients to lead with confidence in the digital age.
Position Overview
The Senior AI/ML Data Platform Engineer will lead the architecture, development, and continuous improvement of shared enterprise data products and AI-enabled data services supporting multiple state agencies. The role focuses on scalable data platforms, real-time streaming, data quality, governance, API design, and integration of AI/ML capabilities into data workflows. The engineer will establish architectural standards, ensure reliable and secure data delivery, mentor engineering teams, and enable agencies to build reusable, trustworthy, AI-ready data products.
Work Location: This role is expected to be onsite at Linthicum, MD. Some teleworking may be permitted based on assignment and team needs.
Interview: An in-person interview may be required.
Key Responsibilities
- Data Product Strategy and Architecture: Define data product standards, lifecycle management, ownership, quality tiers, and platform roadmaps. Design data APIs, schema versioning, data contracts, SLAs, and deprecation policies. Promote data mesh and federated data architectures where appropriate.
- Real-Time and Streaming Data: Architect batch and streaming pipelines, event-driven processing, and low-latency feature delivery for online ML inference. Establish standards for throughput, scalability, backpressure handling, consumer management, and disaster recovery.
- Data Quality and Governance: Implement data quality frameworks, automated validation, scoring, lineage tracking, and monitoring. Enforce data access controls, attribute-level masking, and audit logging in collaboration with governance, privacy, and security teams.
- AI-Powered Data Services: Design and implement intelligent entity matching, data classification, anomaly detection, semantic search, automated enrichment, ML-based scoring, and LLM-powered data transformation and summarization. Establish evaluation and monitoring practices for accuracy, fairness, and reliability.
- Technical Leadership: Own data platform architecture decisions, mentor engineers, lead cross-agency technical collaboration, and represent the platform in architecture reviews, governance councils, and vendor evaluations.
- Documentation and Optimization: Maintain architecture decision records (ADRs), data product standards, and operational runbooks. Improve platform scalability, data reuse, query performance, and cloud cost efficiency.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field from an accredited college or university. A master's degree is preferred.
- At least ten (10) years of experience in data engineering, ML engineering, or data platform development, including at least two (2) years designing or operating production data products or data services.
- At least twelve (12) years of computer experience in information systems design, as required by the stated contract criteria.
- Expert-level SQL and strong Python programming skills, with experience building reliable, production-grade data systems.
- Experience with cloud data platforms on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, including services such as Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Factory, BigQuery, Dataflow, Databricks, or Snowflake.
- Production experience with streaming technologies such as Apache Kafka, Amazon Kinesis, Apache Flink, or Spark Structured Streaming.
- Strong understanding of data modeling and architecture patterns, including data vault, lakehouse, and data mesh.
- Hands-on experience with data quality frameworks, data catalogs, data lineage, API design, data contracts, and event-driven architectures.
- Demonstrated experience integrating ML models into data pipelines or developing AI-powered data services.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience leading or contributing to data mesh, federated data architecture, or enterprise data product initiatives.
- Familiarity with LLM applications for structured and semi-structured data, including text-to-SQL, document extraction, semantic search, and automated enrichment.
- Experience in government, public sector, or highly regulated environments.
- Knowledge of applicable data privacy and security requirements, including PII protection, CJIS, HIPAA, and IRS Publication 1075, where relevant.
- Familiarity with the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) and responsible AI practices.
- Experience with data platform FinOps, cloud cost attribution, storage tiering, and query optimization.
- Contributions to open-source data engineering or ML infrastructure projects.
Skills and Competencies
- Data product ownership: Designs reusable data services with clear ownership, documented contracts, and multiple downstream consumers.
- Architectural judgment: Balances scalability, reliability, maintainability, and cost without unnecessary complexity.
- Innovation: Identifies valuable AI/ML applications and translates concepts into practical solutions.
- Cross-functional leadership: Aligns agency data owners, engineers, governance teams, and leadership on shared standards.
- Mentorship and communication: Provides architectural guidance, maintains clear technical documentation, and strengthens engineering capabilities across teams.
Why Join 4A
- Be part of a mission-driven, women-owned consulting firm with a reputation for excellence.
- Work on high-impact projects across federal and commercial clients.
- Collaborate in an inclusive, growth-oriented culture where innovation is valued.
- Access career development programs, mentorship, and learning opportunities.
- Enjoy a comprehensive benefits package, flexible work options, and a focus on work-life balance.
Equal Opportunity Statement
4A Consulting is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to an inclusive hiring process. Applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation due to a disability may contact . This email is intended solely for accommodation requests.
Please note that 4A Consulting participates in the federal E-Verify program. Upon hire, we will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the US. 4A Consulting will only use E-Verify once you have accepted a job offer and completed the Form I-9.
