Staff AI Engineer Software
Northrop Grumman2 days ago
San Diego, CA, USAStaff+
Base Salary
$214k - $321k/yr
Responsibilities
- Lead the design, development, integration, deployment, and sustainment of AI-enabled software products across cloud and local/on-premises environments.
- Shape technical direction and guide complex AI and software solutions across software, systems, cybersecurity, networking, DevOps, and operations domains.
- Evaluate AI/ML use cases, models, data, hardware constraints, latency, scalability, security, and operational risk.
- Perform technical trade studies, architecture assessments, and solution analyses involving performance, cost, security, and maintainability.
- Develop, fine-tune, evaluate, and deploy AI systems for operational use, including efficient use of GPU, memory, storage, and networking resources.
- Secure and harden end-to-end AI/software systems, infrastructure, platforms, applications, data flows, models, and development pipelines.
- Present technical strategies and recommendations to leadership, customers, and stakeholders.
- Support proposals, technical planning, budgeting, scheduling, and execution planning.
- Mentor engineers and improve engineering standards, collaboration, and technical execution across teams.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related STEM discipline with 12 years of relevant experience; or a master's degree with 10 years; or a PhD with 8 years.
- U.S. citizenship is required.
- Current/active DoD Secret clearance is required.
- Experience moving AI capabilities from research or prototype stages into reliable operational use and integrating AI into end-to-end systems.
- Experience evaluating and deploying AI/ML solutions based on data quality, operational constraints, compute availability, accuracy, latency, throughput, robustness, and hardware efficiency.
- Experience deploying software or AI systems in complex production, laboratory, or mission environments and making architecture decisions through technical trade studies.
- Experience with version control, test automation, CI/CD, and containerized deployment workflows.
- Preferred experience includes computer vision, robotics, autonomous systems, swarm or distributed intelligent systems, GPU optimization, distributed inference, and constrained-compute deployment.
- Preferred experience includes fine-tuning large language or foundation models using LoRA, QLoRA, domain-adaptive pretraining, or similar methods.
- Preferred qualifications include cybersecurity, networking, DevOps, systems engineering, platform engineering, secure open-source model/framework use, technical strategy, proposals, planning, mentoring, and delivering measurable mission or business value.
Benefits
- Health insurance, life and disability insurance, a savings plan, company-paid holidays, and paid time off are provided.
- The position is on-site at Spectrum Center in San Diego, California, with approximately 10% travel.
- No relocation assistance is available.
- Employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base salary.
Categories
About Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman designs and manufactures aircraft, spacecraft, missile defense, C4ISR, and cyber systems for the U.S. government, NASA, and allied nations. The company operates primarily through long-term defense and space contracts, delivering products and services spanning autonomous systems, sensors, software, and sustainment. Founded in 1994 and headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, it is a public company listed on the NYSE (ticker: NOC).