Senior AI and Large Language Model (LLM) Engineer
Black Canyon Consulting7 months ago
Responsibilities
- Serve as the AI/LLM subject matter expert across product and engineering teams.
- Define and implement AI-enabled capabilities and LLM use cases across NCBI platforms, including PubMed and related systems.
- Develop and implement retrieval-augmented generation systems integrating LLMs with large-scale biomedical datasets.
- Provide architectural guidance on model selection, domain adaptation, evaluation strategies, and deployment approaches.
- Improve model grounding, factual accuracy, and scientific reliability in domain-sensitive applications.
- Support engineering teams in productionizing scalable, performant, and maintainable AI solutions.
- Evaluate emerging LLM techniques and recommend practical adoption strategies aligned with organizational priorities.
Requirements
- At least three years of hands-on experience working with large language models after the candidate's last degree, including training, fine-tuning, augmentation, or deployment.
- Demonstrated experience integrating LLMs into production systems such as semantic search, RAG pipelines, or domain-specific question answering.
- Strong experience with ML system architecture and scalable deployment.
- Strong Python programming skills.
- Experience with modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch and Hugging Face and retrieval infrastructure such as embeddings and vector databases.
- Experience collaborating cross-functionally with product and technical teams and serving as a technical subject matter expert guiding multi-team initiatives.
- Preferred: experience building LLM systems for biomedical research or life sciences.
- Preferred: familiarity with large scientific corpora, biomedical ontologies, structured knowledge bases, or biological datasets.
- Preferred: experience developing generative AI systems for DNA, RNA, or protein sequence analysis.
- Preferred: background in bioinformatics, computational biology, or a related discipline.
- Preferred: experience improving factual grounding and reducing hallucinations in scientific or regulated environments.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
- 401(k) plan with employer contribution.
- Paid holidays and vacation.
- Tuition reimbursement.
- On-site role in Bethesda, Maryland; not remote.
Categories
About Black Canyon Consulting
Black Canyon Consulting is a privately held, woman-owned IT and program management services firm that delivers contract support to U.S. federal research and health agencies. The company provides systems engineering, custom software, bioinformatics, and project management through government contracts and IDIQ vehicles; it was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. Recent roles support the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the NIH/NLM.