Job DescriptionJob Description
Grade Level: Grade Level 6 - Exempt
Reports to: Chief Digital Officer
About NED
The National Endowment for Democracy supports freedom around the world.
At NED, we deliver on the belief that freedom is a universal aspiration. Headquartered in Washington, DC, NED is a private, nonprofit foundation, mandated by Congress, dedicated to strengthening democratic institutions worldwide.
NED reflects an enduring American commitment to stand with those striving for dignity, justice, and opportunity. In 2025, NED made 1,552 grants totaling $271 million to support the work of nongovernmental organizations advancing democratic goals in more than 90 countries, including some of the world’s most challenging and repressive environments.
We seek talented, entrepreneurial professionals motivated by purpose and committed to excellence. At NED, you will join a dynamic team of experts who bring their skills, curiosity, and judgment to a consequential mission at a critical moment for democracy around the world. Our work is guided by our shared values: excellence, respect, empathy, accountability, and adaptability.
Position Summary
The AI Platform and Applications Engineer designs, builds, deploys, and supports secure AI-powered applications and core platform services in NED’s local-first AI environment.
This role focuses on translating approved business use cases into reliable internal tools and workflows, while also maintaining the application-layer components needed to run those solutions effectively.
The position combines hands-on software engineering with practical platform stewardship, including:
Model access and routingRetrieval pipelinesApplication integrationTestingMonitoringOperational support
The Engineer works closely with the rest of the IT team and other internal partners on security, governance, infrastructure, and procurement-related matters, but is not the primary owner of those enterprise functions.
The ideal candidate is a strong builder-operator who can:
Deliver useful AI applicationsImprove platform reliabilityHelp NED adopt AI capabilities in a safe, maintainable, and mission-aligned way
This is a hybrid position based in Washington, DC and is part of the bargaining unit.
Primary ResponsibilitiesAI Application DeliveryTranslate approved organizational needs into practical AI-enabled applications, copilots, automations, and APIs with clear success criteriaDesign, develop, test, and maintain internal AI applications that integrate with approved systems, documents, and knowledge sourcesBuild user-facing and system-facing components, including APIs, lightweight interfaces, workflow integrations, and background servicesDevelop retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agentic, and related patterns for enterprise search, question answering, summarization, extraction, and other approved use casesUse tool calling, structured outputs, and workflow orchestration where they improve reliability, traceability, and user outcomesAI Platform Engineering and OperationsAdminister and improve core AI application platform components in NED’s local secure AI environment, including model endpoints, inference routing, embeddings services, retrieval services, and supporting application runtimesConfigure and maintain development, test, and production deployment pipelines for AI applications using modern engineering practicesManage packaging, containerization, release processes, version control, and environment promotion for platform services and applicationsSupport platform observability through logging, metrics, tracing, dashboards, and routine health checksMonitor application and platform performance, troubleshoot issues, and optimize reliability, latency, and costData Integration and Retrieval ServicesBuild and maintain ingestion and retrieval pipelines for approved internal content sourcesImplement document processing, parsing, chunking, metadata enrichment, embeddings, indexing, and ranking strategies to improve answer quality and search performanceMaintain vector stores, document stores, and related retrieval components used by AI applicationsImprove content freshness, retrieval relevance, grounding, and output consistency through testing and tuningQuality, Evaluation, and Operational ReadinessEstablish and maintain testing practices for AI applications, including unit, integration, regression, and offline evaluation workflowsDefine and track measures such as answer quality, groundedness, latency, reliability, adoption, and operational performanceSupport incident triage, issue resolution, root-cause analysis, and service improvement for AI applications in productionCreate and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, architecture diagrams, and support proceduresCross-Functional Partnership and EnablementPartner with business teams to identify, prioritize, prototype, and productionize high-value AI use casesCollaborate with IT and other internal stakeholders on hosting, access, identity, network, security, governance, and enterprise architecture requirementsContribute technical input to decisions involving tools, platforms, and service providers that support AI deliveryHelp develop internal guidance, usage patterns, training materials, and adoption support for AI-enabled tools and workflows QualificationsRequiredBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience8–10 years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, solutions engineering, or a related technical fieldAt least 2–3 years of hands-on experience building applications with modern AI/LLM technologiesStrong programming skills in Python and/or TypeScript/Node.jsExperience building and maintaining APIs, backend services, and production-grade integrationsExperience developing AI-enabled applications using LLMs, embeddings, retrieval patterns, and structured outputsHands-on experience with RAG pipelines and agentic workflows including document processing, chunking, embeddings, vector search, relevance tuning, and grounding strategiesExperience with model access layers or inference runtimes such as vLLM, TGI, llama.cpp, Hugging Face Transformers, or similar toolsFamiliarity with containerized deployment and modern engineering operations, including Git, Docker, CI/CD, and application monitoringExperience operating and supporting technical services in a Linux-based environmentWorking knowledge of application observability, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and production supportExperience writing technical documentation and communicating effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholdersAbility to work collaboratively in a mission-driven environment and translate ambiguous needs into practical solutionsPreferredExperience working in local, on-premises, private cloud, or otherwise restricted computing environmentsFamiliarity with Kubernetes or similar orchestration platformsExperience with enterprise search, OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, vector databases, or other retrieval infrastructureFamiliarity with frontend frameworks for lightweight internal tools and dashboardsExposure to evaluation frameworks, red-teaming approaches, or quality measurement for AI systemsExperience supporting multimodal or structured extraction use casesFamiliarity with authentication and identity integration patterns such as SSO and SAMLExperience working with Security, data governance, compliance, and procurement partners in enterprise
technology deliveryFamiliarity with governance, policy, vendor review, or procurement processes related to enterprise AI toolingExperience in nonprofit, public sector, international affairs, or other mission-driven organizations Talent in ActionPurpose-DrivenReliableExpertiseRespectful CollaborationCuriosityResults-OrientedAn Optimistic Mindset NED Total Compensation
The anticipated compensation range for this position is $103,000–$185,000.
The salary for this position is determined based on a wide variety of factors, including but not limited to an individual’s professional experience, qualifications, education, and other business needs along with internal equity considerations. Employees are not typically hired at the top of the range for their role, and compensation decisions are based on the aforementioned circumstances.
NED also offers a generous benefits package that demonstrates its commitment to employee health and well-being.
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