Technical Lead / Senior Engineer
About the job
- Hands-on experience designing and delivering on-premise artificial intelligence and machine-learning systems, including language-model serving, retrieval-augmented generation, and real-time speech or language pipelines.
- Hands-on experience fine-tuning speech or language models and evaluating their performance using defined measures and held-out data.
- Experience delivering software or artificial intelligence systems in a Department of Defense or similarly controlled environment, including secure development, vulnerability management, and software supply-chain requirements.
- Ability to lead technical reviews, explain complex engineering decisions to customers, and make technical decisions under schedule pressure.
- Ability to travel for technical reviews, integration testing, and demonstrations.
- Must be a United States citizen.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance.
- Lead the system architecture and technical baseline for the artificial intelligence, software, compute, and simulation-integration components.
- Guide selection, development, integration, and deployment of speech, language-model, and supporting software capabilities for on-premise operation.
- Lead development of artificial-intelligence safety and validation controls that prevent unsafe or invalid outputs from affecting the simulator.
- Perform hands-on engineering work in speech and command processing, model adaptation, and system performance.
- Lead technical reviews, troubleshooting, and readiness decisions; explain technical decisions and tradeoffs to the customer.
- Mentor engineers and coordinate technical work across artificial intelligence and machine learning, software, systems, cybersecurity, and aviation subject matter experts.
- Experience with High-Level Architecture or Distributed Interactive Simulation and flight-simulator or training-device integration.
- Experience with schema-constrained generation, ontologies, or other methods for validating artificial-intelligence-generated outputs.
- Experience with preference optimization or other methods for improving models using human feedback.
- Experience with artificial-intelligence and machine-learning security, adversarial testing, or OpenTelemetry-based system observability.
- Prior experience developing artificial-intelligence instructors, training assistants, or similar artificial-intelligence applications.
- A bachelor's degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or a related field is preferred; equivalent relevant professional or military experience may substitute for a degree.
- Ten to twelve years of experience building software or artificial-intelligence-enabled systems, including technical leadership of teams delivering speech or language-model applications; however, demonstrated technical and leadership ability will be considered regardless of total years of experience.
About the company
PeopleTec is an employee-owned defense contractor in Huntsville that delivers engineering, cybersecurity, and program support services to the U.S. defense and civilian federal sectors. Its offerings include systems engineering, software development, test and evaluation, mission operations support, logistics, and a modeling/simulation group plus rapid prototyping in systems integration labs. The company operates by integrating engineering analysis, software/hardware development, rigorous testing, and lifecycle management to support defense programs from concept through deployment. It differentiates itself through its employee-owned structure, end-to-end program lifecycle capabilities, and a strong emphasis on modeling/simulation and rapid prototyping within government channels. Its goal is to help warfighters and federal agencies stay ready and effective by providing dependable, technically skilled services across the full spectrum of defense programs.
Company Size
501-1,000
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
N/A
Headquarters
Huntsville, Alabama
Founded
2005
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- AIMS-D already carries $1.9 million obligations and a five-year ordering period.
- COMET expands PeopleTec into intelligence and foreign-materiel exploitation work across multiple domains.
- 2026 awards and hiring show demand for cleared engineers, testers, and software developers.
What critics are saying
- PeopleTec sued Radiance Technologies on March 25, 2026, signaling persistent talent-and-IP warfare.
- One customer concentration shock from MDA or DIA would crush revenue within months.
- Single-award federal IDIQs invite recompetes; losing AIMS-D would expose the core business.
What makes PeopleTec unique
- PeopleTec won MDA’s $48.1 million AIMS-D IDIQ on February 11, 2026.
- PeopleTec became a prime on DIA MSIC’s $14 billion COMET IDIQ in September 2026.
- Employee-owned Huntsville contractor specializes in cleared missile-defense engineering, modeling, and software talent.
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Benefits
- Training Programs