Senior AI and Large Language Model (LLM) Engineer

LOCATION: Bethesda, Maryland (On-site / Not-remote)

Overview

We are seeking an experienced AI/LLM Engineer to lead the design, customization, and integration of large language models (LLMs) into biomedical research workflows and information retrieval systems. We are looking for someone with hands-on experience training, fine-tuning, augmenting, and deploying LLMs in production environments, ideally within biomedical or life sciences domains. The role is product-oriented and forward-looking, focused on building the next generation of AI-enabled search, retrieval, and knowledge discovery tools.

This role serves as a subject matter expert (SME) across multiple product and engineering teams. The selected candidate will help define, architect, and implement LLM-driven capabilities across a portfolio of NCBI services. The position requires strong technical depth, sound architectural judgment, and the ability to collaborate effectively within existing product and technical ecosystems.

This is a hands-on, build-oriented role with strategic influence. The candidate must be capable of guiding both what gets built and how it gets built.

Only serious candidates accepted - we are not seeking candidates that have recently graduated with a masters degree in the past 1-2 years.

We are seeking candidates with at least 3+ years experience doing this work after your last degree.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the AI/LLM subject matter expert across product and engineering teams.

• Collaborate with product managers and technical leads to define AI-enabled capabilities and define the use of LLMs across NCBI platforms (e.g., PubMed and related systems).

• Develop and implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems integrating LLMs with large-scale biomedical datasets.

• Provide architectural guidance on model selection, domain adaptation, evaluation strategies, and deployment approaches.

• Improve model grounding, factual accuracy, and scientific reliability in domain-sensitive applications.

• Support engineering teams in productionizing AI solutions, ensuring scalability, performance, and maintainability.

• Evaluate emerging LLM techniques and recommend practical adoption strategies aligned with organizational priorities.

Required Qualifications

• 3+ years of hands-on experience working with large language models (training, fine-tuning, augmentation, or deployment).

• Demonstrated experience integrating LLMs into production systems (e.g., semantic search, RAG pipelines, domain-specific QA).

• Strong experience in ML system architecture and scalable deployment.

• Proven ability to work cross-functionally with product and technical teams.

• Experience serving as a technical SME guiding multi-team initiatives.

• Strong programming skills in Python.

• Experience with modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, Hugging Face) and retrieval infrastructure (e.g., embeddings, vector databases).

Preferred Qualifications

• • Experience building LLM-based systems for biomedical research or life sciences.

• • Familiarity with large scientific corpora, biomedical ontologies, structured knowledge bases, or biological datasets.

• • Experience developing generative AI systems for DNA, RNA, or protein sequence analysis.

• • Background in bioinformatics, computational biology, or related disciplines.

• • Experience improving factual grounding and reducing hallucinations in scientific or regulated environments.

• Ideal Candidate Profile

• • Technically deep in LLM training, augmentation, and evaluation.

• • Comfortable influencing architecture across multiple teams.

• • Able to move between strategy, design, and implementation.

• • Pragmatic and product-oriented.

• • Capable of integrating into existing systems and elevating technical execution immediately.

• • Experience with life sciences corpora.

Benefits and Salary

• We attract the best people in the business with our competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental and vision coverage, 401k plan with employer contribution, paid holidays, vacation, and tuition reimbursement.

• We offer a competitive salary commensurate with experience and location.

• If you enjoy being a part of a high performing, professional service and technology focused organization, please apply today!