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Dark Wolf Solutions

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AI Lead Software Architect - SME

Open 66d posting dated yesterday

Dark Wolf constructs and deploys data management and analytics solutions for the defense and intelligence communities. We’re proud to boast a world-class engineering team that thrives on rolling up their sleeves to solve your mission’s biggest challenges.

Dark Wolf is seeking an elite AI Software Architect (SME) to drive the vision, structural topology, and enterprise-wide architectural execution of mission-critical Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems. Operating at the apex of software engineering and hardware acceleration, you will design fault-tolerant, resilient, and ultra-low-latency distributed AI architectures deployed across air-gapped, multi-cloud, and tactical edge environments.

In this role, you will serve as the principal technical authority, bridging high-assurance systems engineering with bleeding-edge AI models, custom inference engines, multi-agent frameworks, and zero-trust DevSecOps pipelines.

Key Responsibilities

  • Enterprise AI System Design: Architect end-to-end distributed AI platforms, high-throughput model inference pipelines, and scalable enterprise LLM/SLM deployment topologies tailored for classified enclaves.
  • Autonomous & Agentic Systems: Design resilient multi-agent orchestration engines, continuous Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) platforms, and real-time semantic routing layers using modern framework paradigms.
  • Hardware & Inference Optimization: Lead system trade studies to optimize compute across heterogeneous hardware (GPUs, TPUs, NPUs), implementing advanced quantization, speculative decoding, and custom execution kernels for edge and air-gapped environments.
  • Zero-Trust Security & Governance: Establish system-wide AI security postures, incorporating automated DevSecOps, prompt-injection guardrails, differential privacy, and rigorous supply-chain risk management for ML artifacts.
  • Technical Authority & Roadmap Strategy: Interface directly with executive leadership and intelligence community stakeholders to map mission objectives to technical architectures, establish enterprise coding and safety standards, and direct R&D initiatives.

Required Qualifications:

  • A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field (Master’s degree or Ph.D. strongly preferred).
  • 15+ years of software engineering and systems architecture experience, with demonstrated leadership in delivering enterprise-scale AI/ML solutions.
  • AI Frameworks & LLMOps: Advanced mastery of low-level framework mechanics (PyTorch, TensorRT-LLM, vLLM, DeepSpeed, Ray), custom extension development, and enterprise orchestration platforms (LangGraph, AutoGen, LlamaIndex).
  • AI Models & Fine-Tuning Strategy: Expertise in novel architecture adaptation, speculative decoding, mixture-of-experts (MoE), parameter-efficient fine-tuning (LoRA, QLoRA), and post-training alignment (RLHF, DPO, GRPO).
  • Machine Learning Systems Engineering: MLOps/LLMOps architecture, model governance, continuous training pipelines, real-time drift detection, and deterministic evaluation frameworks.
  • Systems Programming & Performance: Polyglot mastery in Java, Rust, Python, and C, with deep expertise in asynchronous execution, memory management, CUDA/Triton kernels, and hardware-level performance profiling.
  • Containerization & Mesh Orchestration: Enterprise Kubernetes multi-cluster federation, custom CRDs, Service Mesh (Istio), bare-metal GPU scheduling, and zero-trust containerization strategies.
  • Multi-Cloud & Air-Gapped Infrastructure: Cross-cloud architecture (AWS GovCloud, Azure Secret), Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi), and disconnected/air-gapped tactical node deployment methodologies.
  • DevSecOps & AI Security Tooling: Designing automated SAST/DAST pipelines, confidential computing enclaves (TEEs), runtime guardrails, adversarial AI defense, and automated vulnerability remediation frameworks.
  • Agile & Enterprise Transformation: Steering multi-pod engineering teams, establishing SAFe/Scaled Agile systems execution, and managing architectural debt across multi-year programs.

Desired Qualifications:

  • Advanced Certifications: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), or specialized High-Performance Computing (HPC) credentials.
  • Pioneering Field Work: Proven track record architecting and deploying petabyte-scale ML systems or multi-agent autonomous frameworks into classified, air-gapped intelligence networks.
  • Recognized technical leadership in the broader AI engineering community (e.g., open-source contributions, technical publications, or patent holdings in distributed AI systems/architectures).


Position Clearance Requirement:

US Citizenship with an active TS/SCI security clearance with Full-Scope Polygraph


Location: Chantilly/Herndon, VA.

Target Salary Range: $225,000.00 – $285,000.00+ (Commensurate with specialized architecture expertise and technical skillset)


Equal Opportunity Employer:

We are proud to be an EEO/AA employer Minorities/Women/Veterans/Disabled and other protected categories.

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.

We are strictly looking for direct, full-time W2 employees. We do not engage with third-party staffing agencies, C2C, or 1099 independent contractors for this role.

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What this application asks

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First Name, Last Name, Email, Phone, Resume/CV, Location

  • LinkedIn Profile optional
  • Website optional
  • Are you legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship? choose one
  • Do you currently hold an active security clearance? choose one
  • What is the highest level of security clearance you currently hold? choose one
  • Where did you hear about us? optional
  • Voluntary Self-Identification: For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file. As set forth in Dark Wolf Solutions’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law. Gender: choose one
  • Voluntary Self-Identification For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file. As set forth in Dark Wolf Solutions’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law. Are you Hispanic/Latino? choose one
  • If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows: A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability. A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service. An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense. An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985. Veteran Status: choose one
  • Form CC-305 OMB Control Number 1250-0005 Expires 05/31/2023 Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability Why are you being asked to complete this form? We are a federal contractor or subcontractor required by law to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We are also required to measure our progress toward having at least 7% of our workforce be individuals with disabilities. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had a disability. Because a person may become disabled at any time, we ask all of our employees to update their information at least every five years. Identifying yourself as an individual with a disability is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer will be maintained confidentially and not be seen by selecting officials or anyone else involved in making personnel decisions. Completing the form will not negatively impact you in any way, regardless of whether you have self-identified in the past. For more information about this form or the equal employment obligations of federal contractors under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp. How do you know if you have a disability? You are considered to have a disability if you have a physical or mental impairment or medical condition that substantially limits a major life activity, or if you have a history or record of such an impairment or medical condition. Disabilities include, but are not limited to: Autism; Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, or HIV/AIDS; Blind or low vision; Cancer; Cardiovascular or heart disease; Celiac disease; Cerebral palsy; Deaf or hard of hearing; Depression or anxiety; Diabetes; Epilepsy; Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, or irritable bowel syndrome; Intellectual disability; Missing limbs or partially missing limbs; Nervous system condition for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, or Multiple sclerosis (MS); Psychiatric condition, for example, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD, or major depression. Disability Status: choose one

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