Applied AI Tech Lead - ACG / AEA
Connected Logistics · Springfield, VA
$160,000–$170,000from the description
Jul 1, 2026
Springfield, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A six-month remote contract role serving as the senior technical authority for AI/ML systems within a secured, compliance-driven DevSecOps environment. The position centers on designing and operating retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, managing the full model lifecycle (versioning, evaluation, drift detection, rollback), and integrating AI capabilities into cloud and enterprise workflows across AWS and Azure. Suited to a deeply experienced ML engineer comfortable with regulated environments and security clearance requirements.
Senior level · 10+ years · Remote · Master's required · Secret clearance · Contract
“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 $122,874 (middle half $87,544–$162,374). 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 (12)
This is a 6-month contingent contract award, not a permanent full-time role.
The JD hard-requires an Active Public Trust clearance or higher AND a CAC issued by a government client within the last 24 months. Public Trust is not a formal DoD clearance tier, but the 'or higher' language means Secret/TS would also satisfy it; the clearance requirement field is set to Secret as the closest standard tier that captures the gating intent.
A Master's degree is explicitly required with 'no exceptions' stated in the posting.
The role title is 'AI Tech Lead' with no seniority modifier; the title states no level. However, the 10+ year minimum and technical authority scope support a Senior classification.
The SOC classification is a genuine judgment call: the role spans ML architecture (15-2051 Data Scientists) and production software/systems engineering (15-1252 Software Developers). The primary day-to-day emphasis on RAG pipelines, model lifecycle, and ML system design tips toward 15-2051, but 15-1252 is a strong runner-up given the DevSecOps, API, and CI/CD engineering scope.
Pinecone is listed as the first-named vector DB option alongside OpenSearch and FAISS; all three are captured under one skill with alternatives per the interchangeable-options rule.
PyTorch is listed first among ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn); all three are captured under one skill with alternatives.
AWS SageMaker/Bedrock and Azure ML/Functions are listed under the 'Must have Skill Sets' section but framed as 'and/or' options within a broader cloud-native requirement already captured by the AWS/Azure must-have skill; they are listed separately as preferred to avoid double-counting the same gate.
Salesforce and microservices appear in the 'System Design for Enterprise Workflows' subsection, which reads as contextual/stack description rather than a hard gate, so they are marked preferred.
Requires a Secret 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.
Posting is for a contract engagement — the market benchmarks below price full-time roles, so read the comp comparison with that in mind.
This posting reads as a fully-remote role, so it was scored against the national candidate pool rather than a single metro.
Read the full posting
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