Artificial Intelligence Subject Matter Expert (CBP)

About Agile Defense

At Agile Defense we know that action defines the outcome and new challenges require new solutions. That’s why we always look to the future and embrace change with an unmovable spirit and the courage to build for what comes next.

Our vision is to bring adaptive innovation to support our nation's most important missions through the seamless integration of advanced technologies, elite minds, and unparalleled agility—leveraging a foundation of speed, flexibility, and ingenuity to strengthen and protect our nation’s vital interests.

Title: Artificial Intelligence Subject Matter Expert (AI SME)

Clearance: Active Top Secret with SCI eligibility, ability to obtain and maintain a CBP Background Investigation (CBP BI) and EOD, active BI strongly preferred. We can begin processing for candidates who do not hold one.

Citizenship: U.S. Citizenship required

Location: Ashburn, VA

Salary Range: $180,000-235,000

Signing Bonus: $10,000 for candidates with an active CBP BI. Payable after 90 days; standard terms apply.

The Role

U.S. Customs and Border Protection runs continuous operations across more than 300 land, air, and sea ports of entry, plus Border Patrol stations and the Air and Marine Operations Center. Applying artificial intelligence in that environment is not the same problem as applying it somewhere the cost of a wrong answer is a bad recommendation. A model that runs against operational data here has to be accurate, explainable, and safe under federal accreditation, or it does not ship, no matter how well it performs in a lab.

You are the technical authority on what that requires. You will design, test, and align AI and machine learning models so they perform reliably in a professional operational setting, working alongside program leadership, engineering teams, and the security staff who have to sign off on what you build before it runs against real data.

Two things are worth knowing before you apply. This role exists to bring rigor, not to chase what is newest. And a meaningful part of the job is being the person in the room who can tell the difference between a model that looks impressive in a demo and one that is actually safe to run.

What Success Looks Like

Objective 1: Design models that are accurate enough to trust with real decisions

Model performance gets validated against real operational conditions, not only against a clean benchmark dataset.

Where a model is wrong, you can say how it is wrong and how often, rather than reporting a single accuracy number and stopping there.

You can explain a model's behavior to someone who did not build it, in terms they can evaluate.

Objective 2: Keep models safe and aligned once they are running against real data

Model behavior gets monitored after deployment, not just validated once before it.

Drift and degraded performance get caught before they change an operational outcome.

Failure modes are documented and understood before a model goes live, not discovered afterward.

Objective 3: Get AI capability through federal review without the review becoming a guessing game for everyone else

Documentation and evidence for a security or accreditation review come out of your normal development process.

You can tell an engineering team early what an AI capability will need to clear review, before they have built around an assumption that will not survive it.

Reviewers get a straight answer about what a model does and does not do.

Objective 4: Build technical judgment into the program that outlasts any one model

Other engineers and program staff come to you before committing to an AI approach, not after it has already been built.

Where AI is not the right tool for a problem, you can say so and be heard.

Standards for evaluating and deploying models exist and get used on the next project, not reinvented each time.

What You Bring

Minimum required experience

5+ years in ML, Data Science, or AI engineering

2+ years focused on Generative AI and LLMs

Deep expertise in machine learning, deep learning, and statistical modeling 

Hands-on experience with LLM frameworks, vector databases, and prompt engineering

Advanced Python proficiency; production-grade software development experience

MLOps and cloud AI platform experience (Azure AI, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI)

Proven track record taking AI solutions from PoC to production

Experience in assessing cyber risk and functionality of AI solutions

Experience in incorporating automation and artificial intelligence into cyber prpgrams

Experience with data analytic software such as Splunk, Cribl, Elastic and Sentinel

Preferred Experience

Open-source contributions or published AI research

Experience with edge/low-latency model optimization

Certifications in AI Ethics, Responsible AI, or Cloud AI Architecture

Familiarity with adversarial AI testing and red-teaming

You have taken a machine learning model from prototype to a production system that real people depended on.

You have worked in a regulated or federal environment where a model's decisions had to be explainable and defensible, not only accurate.

You have caught a model failure before it reached a decision that mattered, and can describe how.

You are comfortable across the model lifecycle: data, training, validation, deployment, and monitoring, rather than specialized in only one stage.

You hold an active CBP BI, a fitness determination at another DHS component, or an active DoD clearance. Any of these shortens your start date.

You can talk about the limits of a model as clearly as you talk about its capabilities.

A note on timing

We are staffing this program now. If you already hold an active CBP BI and EOD, your start date is short and a $10,000 signing bonus comes with the role, payable after 90 days under standard terms. We would like to talk this week.

If you do not, we can begin processing a CBP BI for you. That takes months rather than weeks, so applying now means joining a pipeline rather than starting immediately. We would rather tell you that up front than have you find out after you apply.

Employee Benefits

Agile's benefits offerings include, dependent upon position, Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, Holiday Pay, short-term and long-term Disability, Retirement and Learning and Development opportunities as well as other optional benefit elections.