Protagonist
Senior Full Stack Engineer (AI Platform)
$95K–$141K
Washington DC +1 · Senior · Full-time · Posted Sep 4, 2026
- Location
- Washington DC
District of Columbia, United States - Experience
- 5+ years building production software; degree alternatives: 5 years with a bachelor’s degree or 3 years with a master’s degree.
- Education
- Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field; or master’s degree in one of these fields. The posting does not state an equivalent-experience alternative.
About the job
Build and evolve Protagonist’s internal AI platform, owning production software across backend services, data infrastructure, LLM systems, and analyst-facing applications.
What you'll do
- Own platform features end-to-end, from design and implementation through testing and production.
- Build LLM-powered services and data/ML workflows, including agents, RAG retrieval, and document processing.
- Shape platform architecture and roadmap with technical leadership and translate analyst and customer needs into scalable software.
What they ask for
- U.S. person eligible to work on government contracts.
- Bachelor’s degree and 5 years of experience, or master’s degree and 3 years of experience, in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
- 5+ years building production software, with demonstrated ownership of full-stack systems.
- Expert Python; deep Django (or equivalent framework) and PostgreSQL experience; strong TypeScript/React skills; experience with LLM applications, search infrastructure, event-driven architectures, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, Git, CI/CD, and Terraform.
Nice to have
- Active or prior SECRET clearance.
- Experience with ML/data orchestration or NLP pipelines, compliance-constrained environments, data visualization, or analyst-facing tools.
Pay
$95,000-$141,000 (base salary)
Tools
Django REST APIs, React/TypeScript, AWS Bedrock, OpenSearch, Metaflow, Argo Workflows, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL
AI focus
Build production LLM agents and RAG systems using AWS Bedrock and OpenSearch, including prompt engineering, evaluation, and cost/usage controls; develop data and ML workflows for ingestion, enrichment, classification, and document processing.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative