AI​/ML Engineer; Language Model; TS​/SCI; S} Security Clearance

Position: Staff AI/ML Engineer (Large Language Model) (TS/SCI) {S} with Security Clearance
Location: Aurora

ARKA Group L.P. ("ARKA") is an advanced technologies company serving the U.S. military, intelligence community, and commercial space industry delivering next-generation solutions to support the national security space enterprise. Built on more than six decades of excellence, ARKA brings modern approaches and a culture of innovation to the challenges of today. Join the ARKA team to learn how Beyond Begins Here.

Discover your next career opportunity now!

Position Overview:

The Staff AI/ML Engineer (LLMs) will lead the development of Agentic AI capabilities and other LLM based capabilities for a multitude of mission management applications. We offer generous relocation benefits for eligible candidates. In support of work/life balance, many positions are available for a flexible schedule within the pay period. Ask us about the opportunity for flex scheduling if that's of interest to you.

Responsibilities:
Lead and mentor a multidisciplined team consisting of developers and researchers to implement machine learning algorithms to solve a broad set of challenges for our various customers
* Lead and mentor a multidisciplinary team delivering advanced AI/ML solutions

* Apply LLMs to complex domain-specific problems and operational workflows

* Adapt and fine-tune foundation models for specialized use cases

* Design and implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems and semantic search architectures

* Build production-grade LLM applications and agentic systems

* Deploy scalable AI solutions across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments

* Analyze large, multi-modal datasets to extract meaningful features and actionable insights

* Translate emerging research into applied, mission-relevant capabilities

* Communicate technical strategy, status, and risks to internal and external leadership

Required Qualifications:

* B.S. in machine learning, computer science, mathematics, or related fields

* 8+ years of experience, preferably in software development or as a data scientist with 2+ years of building LLM applications using some of the following:

* Fine-tuning foundational models

* Steering Techniques (e.g Sparse auto encoders, representation tuning)

* Building adapters to use foundational models (e.g. PEFT, llama factory)

* Prompt engineering techniques / Inference time techniques (e.g. chain of thought, tree of thoughts, etc.)

* Using Retrieval Augmented Generation techniques to populate and query vector databases (e.g. Weaviate, pinecone, pgvector)

* Using LLM Frameworks (e.g. Lang Chain, DSPy, Microsoft Agent Framework)

* Using AI APIs ( e.g AWS Bedrock, OpenAI)

* Using LLM deployment frameworks (eg llama.cpp, vllm, tgi)

* Developing UIs with Re Act

* Experience leading an interdisciplinary team of researchers and software developers and working with a program manager to define project scope and schedule to ensure we meet project milestones as defined by our customers

* Experience with Python and data science / machine learning libraries (e.g. Num Py, Pandas, Polars, scikit-learn, etc.)

* Experience contributing on a team using version control (e.g. git, Git Lab, Bitbucket)

* Active TS/SCI U.S. Government Security Clearance

Preferred Qualifications:

* M.S. or PhD in machine learning, computer science, mathematics, or related fields

* Experience leading an interdisciplinary team of researchers and software developers

* Experience with any of the following:

* Large Language Models and experience identifying ways to incorporate them into new domains and applications

* Applying Transformer-based architectures to domains in other areas outside of Natural Language Processing (NLP) such as computer vision

* Natural Language Processing algorithms such as BERT

* Reinforcement learning and familiarity with Gymnasium Gym, Open Env, Torch

RL, RLlib, and Stable Baselines

* Applying clustering algorithms and/or deep neural networks to real life problems

* Implementing tracking and pattern-of-life algorithms

* Experience with GenAI Ops techniques (e.g. LLM-as-a-judge) and frameworks (e.g. Lang Fuse, MLFlow, Arize Phoenix)

* Experience with Machine Learning libraries and frameworks such as Hugging Face and Lang Chain

* Experience with Linux

* Experience with CUDA and Python libraries such as CuPy, Numba, CuSignal, CuDF, etc.

* Familiarity with using AWS cloud computing resources such as EC2, S3, Lambda, etc.

* Experience with any of the following additional languages:
Java, C++, Rust, Go, and/or C#

* Experience in application deployment, virtualization, and containerization (e.g. Podman, Docker, Kubernetes, Rancher)

* Experience shaping and writing proposals

* Adjudicated Counter Intelligence or Full Scope Polygraph
Pay Range: $150,000 - $200,000 Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience. The application window will close in 60 days for this position.

Location:

Aurora, CO Being situated at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Aurora…