> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt. # Staff Applied ML Engineer, Federal/National Security Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/d7dbd0967123dff7 Red Cell Partners posts a staff FDE role to build what the customer runs, remote, hiring in Washington, DC, at $180,000–$240,000 base, below the staff+ FDE median of $225,000 across 388 postings with pay. Build production LLM applications, AI agents, and agentic workflows Read from the employer’s posting on November 6, 2026. - [Red Cell Partners](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/red-cell-partners) Posted Sep 22, 2026 by Red Cell Partners · open on Greenhouse as of Nov 6, 2026 **$180,000–$240,000** + equity Remote, hiring in Washington, DC Build production LLM applications, AI agents, and agentic workflows - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2Fd7dbd0967123dff7&placement=top) - [View posting at Red Cell Partners](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/redcellpartners/jobs/5244179007) Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so. ## At a glance ### Posted base pay $180K–$240K Below the median Midpoint $210K · median $225K This job $180K to $240K. Staff+ FDE postings, 388 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $197K to $262K, median $225K. ### The work Builds what the customer runs Balance **Mostly building** Project stages 1. Pre-sales (not covered) 2. Proof of concept (not covered) 3. Implementation 4. Operations Travel **Required, amount not stated** - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Staff+ - **Role**: Individual contributor ### Do you meet what the posting states? The posting reads as a staff-level role. What level are you at now? The work is remote from the US. Can you work from the US? Which of these have you used in production? Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent. [What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths) ## Conditions - **Location**: Washington, DC - **Work arrangement**: Remote - **Remote work restrictions**: Remote within the USA; Washington, DC/Northern Virginia preferred, with possible onsite customer or secure-facility work. - **Travel**: Travel required, amount not stated - **Pay**: ## More like this [Salesforce](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/salesforce) ### [Lead Forward Deployed Engineering - Data Science & Integration](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/d5934da2c82bfef9) Herndon, VA Remote 2mo ago $172,500–$260,100 [Amazon (incl AWS)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/amazon-incl-aws) ### [Sr Forward Deployed Engineer, Forward Deployment Engineering](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/5b9357990c31169e) East Palo Alto, CA · Boston, MA · +3 more 2w ago $168,100–$261,500 [Trase Systems](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/trase-systems) ### [Senior/Staff Full Stack Software Engineer, Federal](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7ed8dedeb53c35c2) Seattle, WA · Mclean, VA Remote 8d ago $180,000–$240,000 - [Other jobs at Red Cell Partners (4)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/red-cell-partners) ## The job description from Red Cell Partners Posted by Red Cell Partners on Sep 22, 2026 ### About Us Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation’s most pressing problems. ### About the Role Red Cell Federal is hiring a Staff Applied ML Engineer to build and deploy production AI systems for federal and national security missions. You'll work across LLMs, model fine-tuning and adaptation, agentic systems, RAG, evaluation, and inference, helping turn rapidly evolving AI capabilities into reliable software that operates in real mission environments. This isn't a pure research role, and it isn't an ML infrastructure role removed from users. You'll work alongside Forward Deployed and Software Engineers, occasionally directly with customers, to understand operational problems and determine how models, data, agents, and software can solve them. Red Cell Federal's platform is being designed to support interchangeable models, including specialized smaller models for edge use cases, and to operate across cloud, on-premise, and edge environments. ### What You'll Do - Build productionLLM-powered applications, AI agents, and agentic workflows - Develop and own model evaluation, fine-tuning, adaptation, and experimentation pipelines - Determine when to use prompting, RAG, fine-tuning, specialized models, or combinations of these approaches - Build rigorous eval systems for model and agent quality, reliability, tool use, and task completion - Develop retrieval and context systems across structured and unstructured mission data - Optimize models and inference for production environments - Deploy and improve models based on real-world performance and user feedback - Partner with FDEs and customers to translate mission requirements into production AI capabilities - Turn solutions developed for individual deployments into reusable platform capabilities ### What We're Looking For - Significant experience building ML or AI systems and deploying in production - Hands-on experience with modern LLMs and foundation models - Deep expertise in several of the following: - LLM fine-tuning / model adaptation - Model evaluation - RAG and retrieval systems - Agentic systems and tool use - Model serving / inference - Embeddings and knowledge retrieval - Synthetic data - Guardrails and AI reliability - Ability to move comfortably between ML experimentation and production engineering - Ability to operate independently against ambiguous technical problems - Interest in working close to users and seeing how AI performs against real operational workflows ### Why This Role The challenge here isn't proving that an LLM can perform a task. It's figuring out how to make AI reliable enough to use in production, measurable enough to know when it fails, adaptable enough to improve quickly, and practical enough to operate within real national security environments. Red Cell Federal is focused on that "agentic last mile": operationalizing and deploying AI against mission requirements rather than stopping at decision support or prototypes. If you want to work deeply on the models and stay close enough to the problem to see whether what you built actually works, let's talk! ### Clearance / Eligibility Because this role supports federal and national-security customers, U.S. citizenship is required with an Active Secret or Top-Secret Security Clearance. ### Location Washington, DC / Northern Virginia preferred. This role may require regular customer-facing work, including onsite meetings, secure-facility work, or travel depending on program needs. **Salary Range:** $180,000-240,000 + bonus + equity. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors. #LI-RCP ### Our Red Cell Partners Benefits (may differ for each incubation) For full-time roles - Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement with strong performance as the firm grows - 100% employer paid, comprehensive health care including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family. - Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees' normal pay. - Unlimited PTO, with management approval. - Opportunities for professional development and continued learning. - Optional 401K, FSA, and equity incentives available. - Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind. - Cost effective GLP-1 solutions available through Crux. We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer: You’ll receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability. ** *Applicant Data Disclosure*** *By submitting an application, you acknowledge that Red Cell Partners, LLC ("Red Cell") uses third-party service providers to facilitate its recruitment and hiring processes. These providers include applicant tracking systems, candidate verification platforms, and fraud detection tools (collectively, "Hiring Platforms"). Your application materials, including your résumé, cover letter, work samples, responses to application questions, and any other information you submit, may be transmitted to and processed by these Hiring Platforms for the following purposes:* - *Managing and administering your application throughout the hiring process;* - *Verifying the accuracy and authenticity of application materials, including by cross-referencing information you provide against publicly available sources and proprietary databases;* - *Identifying indicators of potentially fraudulent, fabricated, or materially misleading application content, including but not limited to discrepancies between submitted materials and publicly available professional profiles, geographic anomalies, and fabricated work histories.* *Applications that are flagged through this process as containing indicators of fraud or material misrepresentation may be declined from further consideration. If you have questions about the status of your application or the evaluation process, please contact * *talent* *@redcellpartners.com* *. * *Red Cell requires its Hiring Platform providers to process your information solely for the purposes described above and in accordance with applicable law. Your information will be retained only for as long as necessary to fulfill these purposes and any applicable legal obligations, after which it will be deleted in accordance with Red Cell's data retention policies.* *For more information about how your data is used, please refer to our Privacy Policy and Applicant Privacy Notice. * [View posting at Red Cell Partners](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/redcellpartners/jobs/5244179007) ## About Red Cell Partners Venture studio building and scaling technology companies in defense, healthcare, and cyber with operational support and co-founder partnership model. Late-stage private · 100–200 people ## Similar jobs [Accenture](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/accenture) ### [AI Engineer - FDE Software Engineering Sr. Manager](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/d71e3d95228a376e) New York, NY · Milwaukee, WI · +40 more 7w ago $112,900–$302,400 [Thomson Reuters](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/thomson-reuters) ### [Principal Software Engineer / Architect – AI, CoCounsel FDE](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/8c6d98a56ed501dd) New York, NY · Frisco, TX · +7 more Hybrid 6w ago $158,900–$340,000 [Defense Unicorns](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/defense-unicorns) ### [Senior Platform Engineer (FedD239)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2d80b4f518bdc61d) Springfield, VA Remote 5w ago $148,750–$201,250 [Enterprise Knowledge](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/enterprise-knowledge) ### [Semantic Data and AI Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/5ccf5311b8887ce2) Arlington, VA Remote 4w ago $135,000–$175,000 [Databricks](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/databricks) ### [AI Engineer – Forward Deployed Engineering (AI FDE), U.S. Public Sector (Federal Focus)](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/9f2d056549050321) Washington, DC Remote 2mo ago $182,000–$250,208 - [Compare staff+ FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/staff) - [Similar jobs in Washington, DC area](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?region=dmv) - [Similar jobs that build what the customer runs](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?role=builds-for-customers) Hiring at Red Cell Partners and want this page changed or removed? 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