Senior AI Engineer - Agentic Platform Lead

Senior AI Engineer – Agentic Platform Lead

Locations: Los Angeles, CA | Washington, D.C. | Seattle, WA

Salary Range: $165,000 – $250,000 USD

EVONA is partnering with a leading defense, national security, and space technology company to hire a Senior AI Engineer – Agentic Platform Lead.

This organization builds mission-critical systems that operate at the intersection of advanced AI, complex hardware, and real-world constraints. Their work directly supports national security, space infrastructure, and next-generation aerospace systems.

This is a senior, hands-on technical leadership role for an engineer who thrives in ambiguity, moves fast, and uses AI as leverage to eliminate friction in complex engineering workflows.

The Role

Our client is seeking a Senior AI Engineer – Agentic Platform Lead to serve as a senior technical leader within a specialized Agentic Computational Engineering (ACE) team.

You will architect and build a multi-agent AI platform that enables autonomous agents to design complex hardware systems end-to-end. You will own the technical roadmap for this platform, lead a small high-caliber team, and work closely with domain experts across propulsion, electronics, and manufacturing.

This role is ideal for a builder who is excited about turning cutting-edge AI research into real, deployable industrial capability.

What You’ll Build

• A scalable agentic AI platform supporting autonomous hardware design
• Distributed orchestration systems coordinating large numbers of AI agents
• Secure execution environments where agents run code, simulations, and analyses
• Memory, retrieval, and provenance systems (RAG, vector databases, decision logs)
• High-performance, observable systems operating at scale

Key Responsibilities

• Architect and own the full-stack agentic AI platform, including orchestration, runtimes, and services
• Design distributed systems (orchestrator–worker, swarms, event-driven architectures) for agent coordination
• Build secure execution layers integrating internal tools, simulations, and data sources
• Implement memory, context, and decision-tracking systems for agent reasoning and traceability
• Profile and optimize performance for latency, reliability, and observability
• Lead and mentor a small team of engineers and technical contributors
• Partner with engineering domain experts to translate real workflows into scalable agentic capabilities
• Influence long-term technical strategy for agentic AI across the organization

Required Qualifications

• Master’s + 5 years, or PhD + 3 years in Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or equivalent experience
• 5+ years building production-grade backend or distributed systems in mission-critical environments
• Strong experience with Python, Go, or Rust and modern microservice architectures
• Hands-on experience with LLM-based systems and agent frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen, or custom runtimes)
• Demonstrated AI-first workflow, using LLMs and agents to materially accelerate development
• Proven technical leadership in fast-moving, ambiguous environments

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in Mechanical, Aerospace, Electrical Engineering, Physics, or Applied Mathematics
• Experience integrating AI agents with engineering tools (CAD/CAE, simulation, manufacturing platforms)
• Experience with observability stacks (logging, tracing, metrics)
• Experience building safety-critical or mission-critical platforms
• Open-source contributions or personal projects demonstrating deep system-building expertise

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive base salary: $165,000 – $250,000 USD
• Annual bonus potential
• Comprehensive health, retirement, and wellness benefits
• Paid time off