Senior Artificial Intelligence Research Engineer

Nashville, IN - USA

Monthly Salary: Not Disclosed

Posted on: Yesterday

Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

Description

Position Summary:

The Senior Artificial Intelligence Research Engineer is part of the Wicked Problems Laboratory within the Institute of National Security at Vanderbilt University and is a key technical contributor focused on advancing research and development in agentic AI frameworks large-scale data systems and AI-driven analytic tools for national security applications. This position is deeply technical emphasizing the design construction testing and optimization of systems that integrate diverse APIs large language models (LLMs) and data pipelines to support adaptive mission-critical workflows.

The role blends advanced AI engineering with applied research executiondesigning programming and coordinating agentic AI architectures developing analytic tools and evaluating emerging threats. Strong capability in AI model development secure system design and generative AI analysis is essential particularly in contexts shaped by adversarial pressures and evolving national security challenges.

Reporting to the Head of the Wicked Problems Lab the Senior AI Research Engineer collaborates with research scientists engineers faculty and external partners to assess threat landscapes strengthen cyber resiliency and accelerate the adoption of secure advanced technologies across government industry and public-sector infrastructures.

Key Functions and Expected Performance:

Lead and support AI research activities including training and tuning small- to medium-sized large language models and coordinating multi-agent AI systems to advance research objectives.
Conduct AI-driven threat analysis to produce actionable security insights.
Support the integration evaluation and testing of AI capabilities in laboratory and partner operational environments.
Develop high-quality documentationincluding system diagrams test results and sponsor deliverablesto support technology maturation and transition.
Maintain expertise in emerging AI-driven threats adversarial models and advanced AI technologies to shape research direction.
Collaborate with faculty interdisciplinary teams and external partners to support grant objectives publications prototypes and demonstrations.
Present technical insights through briefings reports and presentations to academic industry and operational audiences.
Support strategic relationships with government and industry partners while safeguarding research data systems and intellectual property.

Supervisory Relationships:

This position does not have supervisory responsibility; this position reports administratively and functionally to the Executive Director of the Institute of National Security.

Education and Certifications:

Bachelors degree in Computer Science Computer Engineering Data Science or a related technical field is required.
Masters degree in related field is preferred.

Required Experience and Skills:

35 years of hands-on AI engineering experience in enterprise research or critical-infrastructure environments.
Direct experience training and tuning foundation models including parameter-efficient techniques (LoRA QLoRA adapters) dataset construction and evaluation across benchmarks.
Practical expertise integrating LLMs with external tools and APIs including retrieval systems vector databases function calling or multi-agent orchestration.
Expert-level Python proficiency including designing and optimizing complex AI research pipelines building high-performance training and inference systems and developing secure production-quality tooling in modern Python ecosystems (PyTorch Hugging Face Ray vLLM).
Strong software engineering capability including implementing research-grade systems experiment frameworks structured logging and reproducible workflows.
Experience building secure data and model pipelines including preprocessing evaluation and monitoring in sensitive or adversarial environments.
Applied adversarial AI or threat-focused experience such as red-teaming LLMs vulnerability analysis or evaluating model behavior under adversarial conditions.
Ability to design and execute end-to-end experiments from rapid prototyping through operational recommendations.
Strong technical communication skills including producing high-quality documentation and sponsor-facing deliverables.

Preferred Experience & Skills

Hands-on work with AIcyber hybrid systems such as automated threat detection network traffic analysis or AI-augmented defense tooling.
Knowledge of large-scale data systems distributed computing GPU optimization or containerized AI environments (Docker Kubernetes).
Experience building or evaluating agentic AI systemsmulti-agent architectures planning/decision-making agents or autonomous workflows.
Experience implementing or evaluating adversarial ML techniques including poisoning evasion jailbreaks or secure-LLM hardening.

Security Clearance

Eligibility for a U.S. security clearance is strongly preferred.

Required Experience:

Senior IC

DescriptionPosition Summary:The Senior Artificial Intelligence Research Engineer is part of the Wicked Problems Laboratory within the Institute of National Security at Vanderbilt University and is a key technical contributor focused on advancing research and development in agentic AI frameworks larg...

Description

Position Summary:

Key Functions and Expected Performance:

Lead and support AI research activities including training and tuning small- to medium-sized large language models and coordinating multi-agent AI systems to advance research objectives.
Conduct AI-driven threat analysis to produce actionable security insights.
Support the integration evaluation and testing of AI capabilities in laboratory and partner operational environments.
Develop high-quality documentationincluding system diagrams test results and sponsor deliverablesto support technology maturation and transition.
Maintain expertise in emerging AI-driven threats adversarial models and advanced AI technologies to shape research direction.
Collaborate with faculty interdisciplinary teams and external partners to support grant objectives publications prototypes and demonstrations.
Present technical insights through briefings reports and presentations to academic industry and operational audiences.
Support strategic relationships with government and industry partners while safeguarding research data systems and intellectual property.

Supervisory Relationships:

This position does not have supervisory responsibility; this position reports administratively and functionally to the Executive Director of the Institute of National Security.

Education and Certifications:

Bachelors degree in Computer Science Computer Engineering Data Science or a related technical field is required.
Masters degree in related field is preferred.

Required Experience and Skills:

35 years of hands-on AI engineering experience in enterprise research or critical-infrastructure environments.
Direct experience training and tuning foundation models including parameter-efficient techniques (LoRA QLoRA adapters) dataset construction and evaluation across benchmarks.
Practical expertise integrating LLMs with external tools and APIs including retrieval systems vector databases function calling or multi-agent orchestration.
Expert-level Python proficiency including designing and optimizing complex AI research pipelines building high-performance training and inference systems and developing secure production-quality tooling in modern Python ecosystems (PyTorch Hugging Face Ray vLLM).
Strong software engineering capability including implementing research-grade systems experiment frameworks structured logging and reproducible workflows.
Experience building secure data and model pipelines including preprocessing evaluation and monitoring in sensitive or adversarial environments.
Applied adversarial AI or threat-focused experience such as red-teaming LLMs vulnerability analysis or evaluating model behavior under adversarial conditions.
Ability to design and execute end-to-end experiments from rapid prototyping through operational recommendations.
Strong technical communication skills including producing high-quality documentation and sponsor-facing deliverables.

Preferred Experience & Skills

Hands-on work with AIcyber hybrid systems such as automated threat detection network traffic analysis or AI-augmented defense tooling.
Knowledge of large-scale data systems distributed computing GPU optimization or containerized AI environments (Docker Kubernetes).
Experience building or evaluating agentic AI systemsmulti-agent architectures planning/decision-making agents or autonomous workflows.
Experience implementing or evaluating adversarial ML techniques including poisoning evasion jailbreaks or secure-LLM hardening.

Security Clearance

Eligibility for a U.S. security clearance is strongly preferred.

Required Experience:

Senior IC

Key Skills

Arm
Machine Learning
Raspberry Pi
Python
C/C++
Image Processing
5G
OS Kernels
Research Experience
Firewall
Research & Development
Computer Vision

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About Company

Vanderbilt University

At Vanderbilt University , our work - regardless of title or role - is in service to an important and noble mission in which every member of our community serves in advancing knowledge and transforming lives on a daily basis. Located in Nashville , Tennessee, on a 330+ acre campus and ... View more

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