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About This Role
Summary
CTC Group is seeking AI Engineers to provide technical advisory and systems engineering support for the development, integration, and evaluation of AI-enabled applications within Department of Defense (DoD) environments. This role focuses on large language models (LLMs), agentic AI workflows, orchestration frameworks, and emerging AI technologies to support secure, reliable, and mission-focused solutions.
Responsibilities
- Provide technical advisory support to government teams developing, integrating, and evaluating AI/ML-enabled applications and tools.
- Assess AI architectures and solutions involving LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic workflows, prompt engineering, and orchestration frameworks.
- Evaluate emerging AI frameworks, libraries, and development tools to determine suitability for mission requirements and operational environments.
- Review AI application designs, model integration approaches, data pipelines, and technical risks related to performance, reliability, security, and scalability.
- Develop prototypes, technical recommendations, engineering documentation, and briefings to support AI technology adoption and decision-making.
- Support testing and evaluation of AI systems, including model performance, workflow validation, guardrails, and evaluation frameworks.
- Collaborate with software engineers, platform teams, product managers, and government stakeholders to integrate AI capabilities into existing systems and workflows.
- Research emerging AI technologies, development methodologies, and best practices to identify opportunities for innovation and continuous improvement.
Qualifications
- Active TS/SCI with CI polygraph security clearance (polygraph must be current and completed within the past 7 years).
- Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, or a related discipline, subject to applicable education/experience substitutions.
- Experience designing, developing, integrating, or evaluating AI/ML-enabled applications and software tools.
- Experience with LLM applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering, and agentic AI workflows.
- Familiarity with AI orchestration frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, CrewAI, Haystack, or LlamaIndex.
- Experience with software development, APIs, data integration, and system architecture.
- Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, vector databases, embeddings, model APIs, and AI evaluation frameworks preferred.
- Experience with secure AI development, cloud-based AI environments, or DoD/Intelligence Community applications preferred.
Experience Requirements* HS Diploma/GED or Associate's degree with 20 years of relevant experience, or
- Bachelor's degree and 18 years of relevant experience, or
- Master's degree and 15 years of relevant experience
Pay Information
The final salary may be influenced by various factors, such as location, labor categories, experience, education, and/or certifications. CTC also provides a variety of benefits as well as opportunities for continuous education and development.
The estimated salary range for this position is $190,000 - $220,000.
#CJWhy CTC Group?
We recognize that successful partnerships are based on open and direct communication, mutual respect, and the ability to adapt to evolving capabilities. Our cleared employees bring decades of experience supporting customers in the Intelligence and Defense communities. We specialize in providing engineering, technical, operational support, and training services to Federal government, and Mission Operations.
CTC Group provides a comprehensive benefits package that includes, but is not limited to, Health/Dental/Vision, 401k, PTO and holiday pay, disability and life insurance.
CTC Group provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, pregnancy, physical disability, genetic information, mental disability, age, military status or status as a Vietnam-era or special disabled veteran, marital status, registered domestic partner status, gender (including sex stereotyping), medical condition (including, but not limited to, cancer related or HIV/AIDS related) or sexual orientation in accordance with applicable federal and state laws. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including, but not limited to, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.
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Salary Context
This $190K-$220K range is above the median for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $178K across 2239 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 11,520 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 76% of the market. At CTC Group, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $212,040 based on 13,780 positions with disclosed compensation. Mid-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $193,200. Disclosed range: $190K to $220K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $213,480. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,000. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Safety ($266,050) and AI Engineering Manager ($253,461). By seniority level: Entry: $112,320; Mid: $193,200; Senior: $230,000; Director: $272,250; VP: $235,830.
CTC Group AI Hiring
CTC Group has 1 open AI role right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Based in Fort Meade, MD, US. Compensation range: $220K - $220K.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 6% (708 positions) offer remote work, while 10,737 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: New York (3,257 roles, $221,000 median); San Francisco (2,766 roles, $260,550 median); Los Angeles (1,580 roles, $210,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 11,520 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 140 entry-level, 5,630 mid-level, 4,176 senior, and 1,574 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 6% of the market (708 positions). The remaining 10,737 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $213,480. Top-quartile compensation starts at $264,000. The 90th percentile reaches $318,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Safety ($266,050 median, 70 roles); AI Engineering Manager ($253,461 median, 58 roles); Research Engineer ($252,000 median, 476 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 11,520 open positions across 16 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (8,769), AI Software Engineer (586), AI Product Manager (511). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (140) are outnumbered by mid-level (5,630) and senior (4,176) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 1,574 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 6% of all AI roles (708 positions), with 10,737 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $213,480. Top-quartile roles start at $264,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $318,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Safety roles lead at $266,050 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $140,000. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Python (2,267 postings), Aws (1,178 postings), Azure (972 postings), Rag (924 postings), Gcp (715 postings), Pytorch (586 postings), Claude (572 postings), Kubernetes (559 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
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