Lead AI Solutions Systems Engineer

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Job Description

Airbus Digital is looking for a Lead AI Solutions Systems Engineer to join the team. This role can be based in Herndon, VA, Atlanta, GA, Sunnyvale, CA, or Mobile, AL.

Meet the Team

As a multinational company with a global footprint, our business needs protection from security threats and assurance that our end‑users (employees, customers and suppliers) have access to the tools and data they need, when they need it. Our partners depend on us to be reliable and secure. Our information management professionals are highly motivated, dynamic and diverse — we value collaboration, teamwork, solidarity, helping each other, achieving results and always putting Airbus first.

Your Working Environment

The Washington, D.C. metro area is home to multiple Airbus offices: In our nation’s capital you will find the Airbus Experience Center, a collection of interactive, multimedia exhibitions highlighting the extensive role the company plays in the aviation, aerospace and defense industries in the U.S. and around the world. The D.C. area is also home to our regional corporate headquarters – located adjacent to Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) – it makes flying in a breeze!

Your Challenges

• Technical Solution Strategy & Opportunity Framing (40%)
• Evaluate the technical feasibility, data readiness, and infrastructural viability of proposed AI initiatives.
• Act as the principal technical translator, formalizing complex business problems and translating them into rigorous mathematical, data engineering, and algorithmic requirements.
• Define and design technical validation metrics, including ML quality, precision, recall, system latency, data bias, drift, and LLM safety/alignment safeguards.
• Act as a trusted advisor to business leaders, helping them refine their goals and steer them toward highly viable, scalable AI architectures.
• Accompany the business throughout PoCs and their industrialization, from opportunity framing to production hand‑over.
• High‑Level Solution Architecture & Prototyping (30%)
• Shape the technical response: design solution blueprints, evaluate build‑vs‑buy trade‑offs, and design staging plans.
• Collaborate with the AI Lead Developer to define local software development guidelines, API schemas, and MLOps release pipelines.
• Lead and frame assistant/agent coding practices across the team and its delivery partners, ensuring robust engineering discipline.
• Act as an active, hands‑on “doer”: rapidly prototype initial Proof of Concepts (PoCs), establish development sandboxes, and actively co‑author code alongside delivery partners to accelerate industrialization.
• Technology Evolution & Platform Governance (30%)
• Support the technical maturity ramp‑up of the team, raising the engineering and algorithmic capabilities of team members.
• Actively anticipate, de‑risk, and architect the late‑2026 transition to Gemini Enterprise, designing the migration paths from custom‑coded frameworks to robust no‑code agentic structures.
• Coordinate technically with European technical teams (AgentAiR) to align local implementations with global enterprise architectures, API standards, and corporate data governance frameworks.
• Additional Responsibilities (10%)
• Other duties as assigned.

Your Boarding Pass

• Required: Master\'s degree in AI (ML / Data Science), Computer Science, or a highly quantitative field.
• Preferred: Specialization in NLP (Natural Language Processing), Generative AI, or Agentic AI.

Experience

Required

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in advanced analytics initiatives, including mandatory hands‑on, production‑grade architecture and engineering experience in AI, and at least one Generative AI / Agentic AI system successfully designed, prototyped, and integrated into a production environment.
• Significant experience across several business branches—Corporate (e.g., HR, Finance, Facilities) and Operations (e.g., Procurement, Supply Chain, Logistics) at a minimum, with manufacturing experience highly preferred.
• Proven technical leadership in designing and delivering production‑ready system architectures, with experience in database modeling and implementing microservices.
• Proven ability to shape both technical solutions and software architectures (frontend, backend, AI components).
• Robust experience in data modeling and/or data engineering, showing a deep understanding of business ontologies, physical data models, and modern data practices.
• Proven ability to frame complex business problems with non‑technical stakeholders, translating complex business problems into clear, production‑ready technical specifications and data requirements.
• Experience working in an innovation cell or startup environment, combined with experience in a large, matrixed global enterprise.

Preferred

• Experience in agent coding, or in framing and supporting an assistant/agent coding practice.

Travel Required

• 10%

Citizenship

Authorized to Work in the US.

Knowledge, Skills, Demonstrated Capabilities

Required

• Technical & Scientific Rigor: Mastery of the mathematical, statistical, and algorithmic foundations of AI—from traditional ML to modern neural architectures—and the ability to translate this knowledge into reliable, production‑ready system designs.
• Software Engineering Blueprinting: Deep, practical expertise in software development lifecycles (SDLC), API contract design, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), regression testing, and deployment pipelines. If recent agentic delivery experience is limited, the candidate must demonstrate active monitoring of emerging agentic patterns, LLM Wiki, and equivalent reference bodies of knowledge.
• Value‑Driven Mindset: Prioritizes real‑world business outcomes and ROI over algorithmic sophistication.
• Open‑Mindedness: Willingness to revisit established solutions when new, cheaper, or more efficient options emerge.
• Organizational Tolerance: Highly comfortable navigating complex, global corporate structures, data governance constraints, and dependencies tied to Europe‑led solution deployments.

Preferred

• Fluent in French is a plus.

Communication Skills

Required

• Active Listening: Exceptional active listening capabilities, with highly didactic and illustrative communication skills to guide business teams toward shared understanding.
• Influence & Collaboration: Strong ability to defend a solution choice credibly with both business and technical stakeholders, build consensus, and bring teams along.
• Coaching & Delegation: Able to delegate responsibilities and actively coach junior/younger talents to build overall team capability.

Technical Systems Proficiency

Required

• Advanced Analytics & ML Platform: Strong working familiarity with SciKit and/or MLlib (PySpark) and as the reference platform for advanced analytics, ML pipelines, and operational data products. PyTorch, TensorFlow.
• Generative & Agentic AI Stack: Python/Langgraph or ADK (Google Enterprise Agent Platform (formerly Vertex AI) is the strategic agentic platform), RAG (any embedding).
• DevOps & Cloud: Streamlit / React frontends, PostgreSQL / Firebase / BigQuery for persistence and analytics, GCP Cloud Run (serverless containers) for APIs, Python as application Backend (Node/Typescript possible).
• AI‑Assisted Coding Tools: Proficiency in assistant coding and agent coding across supported technologies (Gemini CLI, Claude Code, Codex).

Preferred

• Working familiarity with Palantir Foundry / Skywise.
• Hands‑on experience optimizing LLM models using Vertex AI Studio on GCP.
• Experience in NLP and graph Knowledge: Named entities, Spacy, FlairNLP, LLM‑Wiki / Hierarchical RAG, Neo4j, Spanner, GKG.
• Experience in supporting teams to migrate from GitHub Copilot to Gemini CLI.

Physical Requirements

• Onsite: Hybrid (4 days in office/1 day remote).
• Vision: Daily able to see and read computer screen and other electronic equipment with screens, able to read documents, reports and engineering drawings.
• Hearing: Daily able to hear to participate in conversations in person and via teleconference or phone and to hear sounds on production floor including safety warnings or alarms.
• Speaking: Daily able to speak in conversations and meetings, deliver information and participate in communications.
• Equipment Operation: daily use of personal computer, telephone, copies, fax machine, and related office equipment and using electronic identification card to enter building floors.
• Carrying: Daily able to carry documents, tools, drawings, electronic equipment up to 10lbs.
• Sitting: Daily able to sit for long periods of time in meetings, working on computer.
• Standing: Daily able to stand for discussions in offices or on production floor.
• Travel: 10% of time able to travel independently and at short notice.
• Walking: Daily able to walk through office and production areas including uneven surfaces.
• Personal Protective Equipment required: Required PPE includes, but is not limited to, Safety Shoes, Safety Glasses, Hearing Protection, Respirators/Masks, and/or Protective Gloves as required by site and/or customer site.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, marital status, pregnancy, genetic information, or other legally protected status.

Company

Airbus Americas, Inc.

Employment Type

US - Direct Hire

Experience Level

Professional

Remote Type

Flexible

Job Family

Digital

Job Posting End Date

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