Senior Agentic AI Engineer / AI R&D Lead

About Leading Edge Skills

Leading Edge Skills LLC (LES) is an established California-based organization and federal contractor delivering leadership development, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data analytics, technology training, and consulting to defense agencies, civilian government organizations, and commercial clients.

Our federal portfolio includes multi-year programs with the U.S. Navy's NAVSEA/NSWCDD, NAVSUP/Navy Supply Corps School, Naval Surface Warfare Center Port Hueneme Division, and the U.S. Army. These engagements encompass leadership and advanced management development, AI and emerging technology applications, mission- and capability-based test and evaluation, digital engineering, modeling and simulation, cybersecurity education, and professional workforce development.

LES has delivered 60+ leadership development cohorts under an ongoing Navy program. Our defense program footprint extends across Dahlgren, Virginia Beach, Newport, Port Hueneme, and the San Diego region, supporting scientists, engineers, military personnel, technical professionals, and senior leaders. Our broader experience includes cybersecurity workforce development for the California Department of Rehabilitation.

Our next strategic direction is technology research and development. Building on our established defense contracting experience, LES is developing capabilities in applied AI, autonomous systems, cybersecurity innovation, intelligent decision-support, and advanced simulation. We intend to pursue long-term R&D, SBIR/STTR, prototype development, and technology commercialization opportunities with DoD agencies and other federal organizations.

We seek technically accomplished innovators who can bring original ideas, demonstrated engineering expertise, and a commitment to developing practical technologies that address defense mission challenges.

Position Overview

LES is seeking an accomplished Senior Agentic AI Engineer / AI R&D Lead to help conceptualize, architect, develop, and validate innovative AI technologies for defense and government applications.

We are particularly interested in engineers, researchers, and technical innovators who have personally designed and built functional AI systems, including agentic AI platforms, multi-agent applications, intelligent decision-support tools, autonomous workflows, and advanced analytical solutions.

The successful candidate will contribute to emerging technology research, technical feasibility assessments, software architecture, prototype development, and selected federal R&D pursuits.

This is a hands-on technical position for someone capable of personally engineering and demonstrating technology, not simply advising on AI adoption or delivering instructional programs.

We value candidates with an entrepreneurial mindset who can recognize emerging technological opportunities and help transform promising ideas into defensible research concepts and commercially viable products.

Key ResponsibilitiesAI Engineering and Prototype Development

• Design, develop, and validate sophisticated agentic AI systems and LLM-powered applications.
• Engineer autonomous and human-supervised AI agents that perform complex analytical tasks and support operational decision-making.
• Build multi-agent workflows involving planning, reasoning, orchestration, information retrieval, and external tool integration.
• Develop functional software prototypes using Python, AI frameworks, APIs, and contemporary development practices.
• Implement retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), structured data pipelines, knowledge representations, and vector databases where appropriate.
• Integrate AI components with secure backend systems, databases, cloud environments, and enterprise applications.
• Develop systems incorporating explainability, audit trails, human oversight, and reliable outputs.
• Personally test, troubleshoot, optimize, and demonstrate engineered solutions.

Applied AI Research and Innovation

• Identify innovative technical approaches to complex defense and government challenges.
• Evaluate existing technologies and determine opportunities for meaningful technical advancement.
• Formulate research hypotheses, feasibility experiments, and measurable technical objectives.
• Investigate emerging capabilities involving agentic AI, multimodal systems, advanced reasoning, optimization, and AI evaluation.
• Develop methods for assessing accuracy, reliability, robustness, scalability, transparency, and uncertainty.
• Produce technical research findings, experimental evidence, feasibility reports, and documented demonstrations.
• Contribute original ideas capable of supporting future technology development and intellectual property.

Defense R&D and SBIR/STTR Initiatives

• Evaluate DoD technology requirements and determine whether innovative AI solutions are technically feasible.
• Collaborate with LES leadership, systems engineers, defense SMEs, and other technical professionals.
• Develop technical approaches responsive to individual SBIR/STTR research topics and related defense innovation opportunities.
• Prepare technical architectures, experimental plans, development roadmaps, research milestones, and prototype specifications.
• Contribute technical documentation to government R&D proposals.
• Assess development resources, technical risks, and opportunities for transition to operational use.
• Potentially serve as a technical lead or Principal Investigator on suitable projects, subject to applicable eligibility and employment requirements.

Product Development and Commercialization

• Identify opportunities to mature research concepts into functional software products.
• Recommend scalable technical architectures and practical implementation strategies.
• Evaluate government and commercial applications of proposed technologies.
• Help develop prototype-to-product roadmaps and technology commercialization strategies.
• Support long-term collaborative R&D