Lead AI/ML Engineer

Job Title: Lead AI/ML Engineer

 Location: Washington, DC

 Employment Type: Contract

About Us:

 DMV IT Service LLC is a trusted IT consulting firm, established in 2020. We specialize in optimizing IT infrastructure, providing expert guidance, and supporting workforce needs with top-tier staffing services. Our expertise spans system administration, cybersecurity, networking, and IT operations. We empower our clients to achieve their technology goals with a client-focused approach that includes online training and job placements, fostering long-term IT success.

Job Purpose:

We are looking for a highly experienced and hands-on Lead AI/ML Engineer to spearhead the development and implementation of cutting-edge machine learning and generative AI solutions. This position plays a key leadership role in shaping AI capabilities across the organization, mentoring team members, and driving the adoption of scalable, cloud-native platforms. The ideal candidate has deep technical knowledge across supervised and unsupervised learning, MLOps, LLMs, and AI infrastructure automation.

Requirements

Key Responsibilities:

• Architect and build machine learning models including regression, classification, clustering, time-series forecasting, and ensemble methods.
• Design and train neural network architectures (e.g., CNNs, RNNs, LSTMs) tailored to diverse data sets and business objectives.
• Develop Generative AI applications using Large Language Models (LLMs) and foundation models; apply techniques such as prompt engineering, LoRA, and PEFT.
• Write high-quality, production-level code in Python, leveraging JupyterLab and VSCode.
• Deploy ML solutions on cloud-native infrastructure using Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud services (AWS, Azure); utilize Git for version control.
• Oversee the complete machine learning lifecycle, including model serialization (Pickle, Joblib, ONNX) and API deployment via FastAPI and serverless frameworks.
• Build internal AI tools and user interfaces using Streamlit, and apply modern front-end skills (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).
• Promote adoption of Databricks for AutoML, workflow automation, and scalable ML pipelines.
• Conduct advanced data processing, feature engineering, and visualization using tools such as pandas, polars, NumPy, scikit-learn, seaborn, and PyTorch.
• Lead and mentor junior engineers, support AI literacy across departments, and ensure technical alignment with business needs.

Required Skills & Experience:

• Strong background in designing and deploying machine learning and AI systems in production environments.
• Extensive hands-on experience with supervised, unsupervised, and deep learning algorithms.
• Proficient in Python, with a focus on developing scalable, maintainable code.
• Experience implementing and fine-tuning Generative AI and LLM-based solutions.
• Solid understanding of MLOps practices and deployment pipelines using Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud services (AWS, Azure).
• Familiarity with tools for model versioning, API integration, and serverless infrastructure.
• Practical knowledge of Databricks and ML workflow automation.
• Expertise in data visualization, exploratory analysis, and storytelling through data.
• Strong leadership and mentoring capabilities with the ability to foster cross-functional collaboration.