Sr. AI Operations Engineer
Centurion Consulting Group · Washington
—
Jun 29, 2026
Washington
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior engineering role focused on building and maintaining AI-powered cybersecurity tools within a cross-functional team of AI engineers and security specialists. Day-to-day work covers designing, deploying, and optimizing AI systems that support functions such as intrusion detection, incident response, threat hunting, and vulnerability analysis, as well as monitoring their performance and producing effectiveness reports. Suited to someone with a background spanning both AI/data science and hands-on cybersecurity defense.
Senior level · 5+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · 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
Roughly 120 people in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 90–190
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $132,200 (middle half $105,700–$172,960).
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 (9)
This role sits at the intersection of AI/data science and cybersecurity. The primary day-to-day work is designing, implementing, and fine-tuning AI/ML models for cyber use cases, which maps most closely to Data Scientists (15-2051); Information Security Analysts (15-1212) is a credible runner-up given the 2+ year cybersecurity gate and the operational security context.
The contract period is explicitly July–December 2026 with a possible extension, placing this firmly in the Contract employment category.
The degree requirement states 'Bachelor's degree … is required OR related work experience,' making equivalent experience an accepted substitute — treated as no hard degree gate.
Python and Bash are listed together as examples of scripting languages under a single proficiency requirement; they are captured as mutual alternatives reflecting that framing.
AI frameworks (AWS Bedrock/SageMaker, Transformer, TensorFlow, PyTorch, LangChain/LlamaIndex) are listed under 'Familiarity with one or more of,' meaning any single framework satisfies the requirement — AWS Bedrock is used as the primary name with the others as alternatives.
LLM fine-tuning is called out as a distinct required skill separate from general LLM familiarity and is listed under Required Qualifications.
DevSecOps, CI/CD, AWS cloud architecture, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, GitLab, and NIST/FedRAMP/FISMA compliance experience all appear under the Preferred Qualifications section.
No compensation figures are stated in the posting.
Posting is for a contract engagement — the market benchmarks below price full-time roles, so read the comp comparison with that in mind.
Read the full posting
The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.