Principal AI Architect and Enterprise AI Transformation Lead

Unissant delivers innovative capabilities to the agencies that keep our nation healthy and safe. We apply our domain expertise data acumen and technology know-how to achieve breakthrough results for our clients. Working collaboratively we advance missions and careers through a focus on honesty integrity and dependability. We continuously look for talent excited to join that effort. To learn more about our exciting organization please visit us at .

We are seeking a Principal AI Architect and Enterprise AI Transformation Lead to join our team and support our federal client in Ashburn VA.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on AI leader who combines deep technical expertise with enterprise architecture AI strategy and customer engagement. This individual will lead the adoption and operationalization of AI capabilities while personally shaping solution architecture developing prototypes and guiding secure deployment in customer environments.

The successful candidate will bring hands-on experience from a commercial AI company or comparable fast-moving commercial AI environment and apply those practices to secure federal missions. This individual will build and demonstrate AI solutions using Generative AI Large Language Models Agentic AI Retrieval-Augmented Generation machine learning and cloud-native technologies and must be equally comfortable writing code designing enterprise architectures leading customer demonstrations and workshops guiding technical teams and advising executives on AI strategy adoption and measurable mission value.

• Lead enterprise AI strategy architecture adoption and roadmaps while translating priorities into executable initiatives across programs customers and technical teams.
• Identify high-value opportunities where AI can improve mission performance decision-making operational efficiency automation and customer services.
• Evaluate foundation models AI platforms development frameworks and emerging technologies through hands-on experimentation and benchmarking then recommend practical options based on mission fit security scalability cost and implementation risk.
• Rapidly design build test and demonstrate AI and machine learning prototypes that validate high-value mission and business use cases and establish a path to production.
• Convert validated prototypes into secure scalable production-ready solutions using Generative AI Large Language Models Agentic AI Retrieval-Augmented Generation intelligent automation and related enterprise AI technologies.
• Develop AI applications and services using Python APIs cloud-native services and modern AI frameworks.
• Design and implement enterprise RAG solutions including document ingestion embeddings vector databases semantic search grounding retrieval orchestration and response evaluation.
• Design and develop AI agents and multi-agent workflows that integrate with enterprise applications data sources APIs and business processes.
• Architect secure and scalable AI platforms across hybrid-cloud multi-cloud and on-premises environments.
• Design and implement MLOps and GenAIOps pipelines supporting model development deployment evaluation monitoring governance and lifecycle management.
• Build and integrate data pipelines vector databases model endpoints agent frameworks APIs and cloud-native AI services.
• Establish technical approaches for prompt engineering model selection fine-tuning grounding human-in-the-loop workflows guardrails and AI evaluation.
• Partner with engineering cybersecurity data cloud DevSecOps operations and enterprise architecture teams to integrate AI capabilities with existing systems and target-state architectures.
• Conduct architecture reviews code reviews technical assessments and solution evaluations to ensure alignment with security privacy governance interoperability performance and scalability requirements.
• Define reusable AI reference architectures development patterns technical standards and implementation best practices.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership by contributing to solution design and implementation resolving complex technical issues reviewing engineering work and mentoring delivery teams.
• Lead customer demonstrations technical workshops discovery sessions solution reviews and executive briefings that translate AI capabilities into clear mission use cases adoption paths and measurable business value.
• Provide technical leadership for business development capture proposals solutioning and customer demonstrations by shaping credible AI approaches architectures prototypes and implementation plans.
• Apply commercial AI product-development rapid experimentation and deployment practices from a commercial AI company or comparable fast-moving technology organization to accelerate secure AI adoption in federal and national security environments.
• Remain current on developments in Generative AI Agentic AI machine learning cloud AI platforms data engineering and responsible AI.

• Minimum 15 years of progressive experience in software engineering enterprise architecture cloud architecture systems engineering data engineering or related technical disciplines including leadership of complex enterprise technology initiatives.
• Minimum 8 years of experience designing and delivering AI machine learning data science or advanced analytics solutions including recent hands-on experience building and deploying enterprise AI applications.
• Demonstrated success serving as a Principal AI Architect Enterprise AI Architect AI Solutions Architect Chief Architect Lead AI Engineer or equivalent senior technical leader responsible for enterprise-scale AI solutions.
• Demonstrated experience personally designing coding prototyping and deploying functional AI applications while also providing architecture and strategic leadership.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience at a commercial AI company or comparable commercial technology organization developing implementing or scaling AI products and solutions; experience applying commercial AI practices within federal national security regulated or mission-critical environments is strongly preferred.
• Advanced hands-on programming experience with Python and relevant AI machine learning data science and API development libraries.
• Experience developing Generative AI applications using Large Language Models prompt engineering Retrieval-Augmented Generation tool calling AI agents and orchestration frameworks.
• Hands-on experience with leading enterprise AI and machine learning platforms and frameworks such as Azure AI AWS Bedrock Amazon SageMaker Databricks MLflow Hugging Face LangChain LangGraph LlamaIndex or comparable technologies.
• Experience designing and implementing vector databases embedding pipelines semantic search knowledge retrieval document processing and enterprise RAG solutions.
• Experience designing autonomous or human-supervised AI agents and multi-agent workflows.
• Experience implementing AI evaluation methods for accuracy groundedness relevance safety latency reliability and overall solution performance.
• Experience implementing MLOps GenAIOps model monitoring AI governance and automated deployment pipelines.
• Experience with Docker Kubernetes APIs microservices CI/CD pipelines infrastructure automation and cloud-native application development.
• Strong understanding of machine learning deep learning natural language processing Generative AI Agentic AI data science and enterprise architecture.
• Experience architecting complex hybrid-cloud multi-cloud and on-premises environments supporting regulated or mission-critical operations.
• Experience developing enterprise roadmaps reference architectures technology standards reusable solution patterns and technical governance processes.
• Strong knowledge of enterprise architecture frameworks such as TOGAF FEAF DoDAF Zachman or equivalent methodologies.
• Strong understanding of responsible AI cybersecurity data privacy access controls model risk compliance and secure AI development practices.
• Demonstrated ability to move AI solutions from experimentation and proof of concept through deployment and operational adoption.
• Strong executive presence and the ability to translate complex AI concepts into clear recommendations tradeoffs risks adoption plans and business or mission value for senior stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to engage technical and executive audiences.
• Proven ability to influence without direct authority and work effectively across commercial AI organizations federal customers internal teams partners and external organizations.

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering Artificial Intelligence Data Science Mathematics Information Systems or a related field is required.
• A masters degree in Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Data Science Engineering or a related discipline is preferred.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to present complex technical concepts clearly and effectively.
• Ability to interface with inspire and influence stakeholders at multiple levels of the organization.
• Ability to communicate complex technical information clearly to technical non-technical and executive audiences.
• Strong ability to lead technical workshops architecture discussions customer demonstrations and executive briefings.
• Ability to translate business and mission requirements into practical AI architectures and implementation plans.

• DHS CBP or TS/SCI clearance is required.
• Active security clearance is preferred.

• Local candidates are required.
• Must be onsite in Ashburn VA five days per week for the first year.

• Mainly a routine office environment.
• May be required to lift up to ten (10) pounds.
• Ability to work extended hours when required.
• Eastern Time work hours aligned with the client workday.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the individual(s) assigned to this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties responsibilities and skills required. Unissant management reserves the right to modify add or remove duties and to assign other duties as addition where applicable and available reasonable accommodation(s) may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions of this position.

Please note: Candidate(s) will be required to go through pre-employment screening.

Unissant Inc. is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer! (EOE; M/F/Disability/Vets)

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