AI Engineer 1 - Compliance, Quality & Testing
The Nuclear Company · Washington, DC
$80,000–$150,000from the description
Jun 28, 2026
Washington, DC
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
An entry-level engineering role focused on building automated test coverage and quality assurance practices for a nuclear software platform that must comply with NQA-1 regulatory standards. The work involves writing unit, integration, and end-to-end tests with AI-assisted tooling, supporting compliance documentation, and helping establish verification and validation workflows. Suited to early-career engineers comfortable with test automation frameworks and willing to learn a heavily regulated domain.
Junior level · National · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $104,300 (middle half $80,310–$133,180). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (8)
The role title is 'AI Engineer 1', but the primary day-to-day work is building test automation and quality/V&V practices (unit, integration, E2E tests, NQA-1 documentation, defect tracking). It is classified as QA/testing (15-1253) rather than software development, though there is a meaningful software-engineering component (Python/TypeScript backend work) that makes 15-1252 a plausible runner-up.
The posting states '0-2 years of professional experience' and explicitly calls this an 'entry-level role', supporting a Junior classification despite the wide $80K–$150K salary band.
The degree requirement is listed as 'Computer science degree or equivalent' — because equivalent experience is explicitly accepted, no formal degree is hard-gated.
The LLM/AI-assisted testing skill is treated as required because the posting states candidates must have 'hands-on application' of using AI to generate/review tests in a real project — not just theoretical knowledge — and this appears in the Required Experience section.
Playwright is listed as the primary name for the test automation framework requirement, with Cypress, Jest, and PyTest captured as named alternatives since the JD explicitly lists them as interchangeable options.
CI/CD pipelines, Palantir Foundry, and version control (Git) appear only under the Preferred Experience section and are marked accordingly.
No work location is specified in the posting; the company is US-based (nuclear buildout in the United States) but no city, state, or remote policy is stated. CBSA fields are left blank.
Export control language is present but does not constitute a hard security clearance gate.
Read the full posting
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