AI Engineer at CDIT
Norfolk, VA
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Jul 27, 2026
Norfolk, VA
Jul 29, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
An AI/ML engineer role embedded in a DoD program at NAVSEA in Norfolk, VA, building predictive and generative AI systems against Navy ship maintenance, logistics, and readiness data. Day-to-day work spans the full ML lifecycle — data ingestion through production deployment — with a strong MLOps and NLP focus inside AWS GovCloud. The role suits an experienced ML practitioner comfortable operating under DoD security and accreditation requirements.
Senior level · 5+ years · Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC · Bachelor's required · Secret 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 $102,506 (middle half $78,857–$131,132).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 29, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (13)
The SOC classification is a genuine toss-up: the role blends ML/data-science modeling (15-2051) with substantial software/MLOps engineering (15-1252). It is classified as Data Scientists because the primary deliverables are models, RAG pipelines, and predictive insights rather than general application software.
PyTorch and TensorFlow are listed as alternatives for the deep-learning framework requirement ('at least one'); both are named in the required qualifications section.
Hugging Face appears in the responsibilities narrative alongside required frameworks but is not explicitly called out in the Required Qualifications block, so it is marked preferred.
AWS GovCloud is listed as 'preferably' in the required qualifications, so it is marked preferred despite the surrounding required context.
ECS and EKS are presented as interchangeable options ('Docker, ECS, or EKS') within the required qualifications; Docker is the named primary skill.
OpenSearch and pgvector are listed as vector database options in the responsibilities section (not the required qualifications block), so they are marked preferred.
AWS Step Functions is mentioned only in the responsibilities section, not the required qualifications, and is marked preferred.
DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level II (e.g., Security+ CE) is required within 6 months of hire — candidates need not hold it at time of hire, but it is a hard contractual gate.
Active Secret clearance is a hard requirement at time of hire; TS/SCI is listed as preferred.
A Bachelor's degree is the stated minimum; a Master's or PhD is 'strongly preferred' but not required. Equivalent experience may substitute per contract labor-category definitions, but the posting does list a degree as the baseline — the degree requirement is set to Bachelors.
No compensation figures are provided in the posting.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): DoD 8570/8140 IAT Level II.
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.
Read the full posting
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