AI Security & LLM Engineer at AnaVation
Reston, VA
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Jul 23, 2026
Reston, VA
Jul 24, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
This role centers on securing and building generative AI infrastructure for a U.S. federal intelligence community contractor. Day-to-day work involves designing multi-agent orchestration systems and RAG pipelines, defending against LLM-specific threats such as prompt injection, and conducting ongoing red-teaming exercises. It suits an experienced engineer comfortable working at the intersection of AI development and cybersecurity, and requires an active TS/SCI clearance with CI Polygraph.
Senior level · 8+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · TS/SCI clearance · 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
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $158,337 (middle half $126,441–$180,105).
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)
This role sits at the intersection of AI/LLM engineering and cybersecurity; the primary day-to-day work leans toward building and securing AI systems (writing production-grade code, designing multi-agent architectures, RAG pipelines), which favors Software Developers (15-1252) over Information Security Analysts (15-1212), though the red-teaming and adversarial defense duties make 15-1212 a genuine runner-up.
The clearance requirement is TS/SCI with CI Polygraph — the most restrictive gate in this posting and a significant fillability constraint.
The certification requirement is unusual: the JD requires active IAT Level II AND CSSP Infrastructure Support certifications by onboarding, but notes that certain individual certs (CySA+, CND, GICSP, SSCP) satisfy BOTH requirements simultaneously. CompTIA Security+ (IAT II) and CompTIA Cloud+ (CSSP) are listed as the primary examples; the four combo-certs are captured as alternatives on both skills.
Python and Rust are listed as 'at least one required' — Python is emitted as the primary skill with Rust as an alternative.
The company is headquartered in Chantilly, VA (Washington DC metro area); no explicit remote option is mentioned, and the cleared/intelligence-community nature of the work strongly implies on-site.
No compensation figures are provided in the posting.
Ignored 2 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): multi-agent orchestration, OWASP Top 10 for LLMs.
Requires a TS/SCI clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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