Senior AI Solutions Engineer – Local + Azure/AWS GovCloud LLM Deployment – USA Only

Eligibility: This role is open to U.S. citizens only due to client security and compliance requirements. Please apply through this posting only — do not contact Data-Sleek directly regarding this position. Applications received outside this channel will not be considered and reported to Upwork. Data-Sleek is looking for a Senior AI Solutions Engineer to lead our on-premise and government-cloud AI deployments. You will design, build, and deploy AI-powered data pipelines for clients who cannot use commercial cloud due to ITAR, CMMC, or other data residency constraints, beginning with a client in the aerospace and defense sector. Beyond this first engagement, you will become Data-Sleek's go-to engineer for AI deployments across defense and aerospace clients, building the practice rather than just executing a single project. About Data-Sleek Founded in 2020, Data‑Sleek® is a U.S.-based AI and data consulting firm that helps mid-market companies build the data foundation that AI actually runs on. We own the full path — data strategy, architecture, integration, warehousing, and AI implementation — so organizations can adopt AI with confidence, stay compliant, and scale, without first hiring an internal data team. Our distributed U.S. team (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Irvine, Dallas, Chicago, and New York) partners with clients across healthcare, finance, insurance, logistics, and technology, modernizing data platforms with best-in-class tools like Snowflake, dbt, Fivetran, Tableau, and AWS. Trusted by Fortune 500 institutions and growing companies alike, Data‑Sleek turns complex data into measurable outcomes — faster insight, lower cost, and AI projects that deliver. About the Role You will own the technical delivery of AI-powered data pipelines in restricted environments where commercial cloud is not an option. The immediate engagement centers on a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) data migration: building a pipeline that connects to a client's SharePoint on a restricted Microsoft 365 government tenant, reads engineering documents, classifies and summarizes them, detects duplicates, and rates naming-convention compliance to produce a migration-readiness report. You will start on-premise, then help the client evaluate and move to government cloud for production. Key Responsibilities AI Pipeline Development Build AI pipelines that connect to a client's SharePoint on a government cloud tenant, read engineering documents, classify them by type, generate summaries, detect duplicates, and rate naming-convention compliance in support of PLM data migration. Catalog large document repositories and produce migration-readiness reports and Excel catalogs that give clients a clear, measurable picture of their data. Engineer document-parsing workflows across DOCX, PDF, and XLSX formats, including embedding generation and database operations. On-Premise & Government Cloud Deployment Deploy on-premise first — a Mac Mini running Gemma via Ollama — standing up, serving, and tuning local inference infrastructure. Evaluate and migrate to production on Azure OpenAI (Azure Government) or AWS Bedrock (GovCloud) when the client is ready to scale. Keep deployments compliant within ITAR-sensitive, restricted-network boundaries throughout. Architecture & Cost Advisory Produce cost models and architecture recommendations that help client IT teams make informed platform decisions based on measured data, not vendor pitches. Compare deployment options — local, Azure Government, and AWS GovCloud — on cost, performance, and compliance, and explain the trade-offs clearly. Practice Building & Delivery Serve as Data-Sleek's go-to engineer for AI deployments across defense and aerospace clients. Build a reusable capability — a repeatable AI-solutions practice — rather than executing a single one-off project. What You Bring Required U.S. Citizen: U.S. citizenship is required and non-negotiable due to ITAR and client security and compliance requirements. Production LLM deployment: You have stood up inference infrastructure — not just called an API. You've handled model loading, memory constraints, failure modes, and throughput tuning in a real deployment. Local inference: Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp, LM Studio, or TGI. You've served open-source models (Gemma, Llama, Mistral) on local hardware. Cloud AI platforms: Azure OpenAI or AWS Bedrock — at least one. Service configuration, model access, authentication, and token-based pricing. Python: Pipeline engineering — document parsing (DOCX, PDF, XLSX), API integrations, embedding generation, and database operations (SQLite, Postgres). Experience: 5+ years post-degree in software engineering, data engineering, or ML engineering. Strong Preferences Microsoft ecosystem: Entra ID, Microsoft Graph API, and SharePoint REST API at the API level. GCC High experience is a bonus. MCP (Model Context Protocol): Experience building or consuming MCP servers — a significant plus for a fast-evolving protocol. Workflow orchestration: n8n, Temporal, Airflow, or similar. The pipeline is orchestrated, not scripted. Government cloud awareness: Understanding of what FedRAMP High, IL4/IL5, and ITAR mean for cloud architecture decisions. Embeddings & vector similarity: sentence-transformers, pgvector, Qdrant, or FAISS for duplicate detection. 
Bonus (valued if present) Aerospace or defense experience: Familiarity with ECOs, BOMs, and AS9100 saves ramp time. Apple Silicon optimization: MLX, Metal acceleration, and Ollama tuning on M-series chips. Agentic frameworks: Bedrock AgentCore or Azure AI Foundry — the future direction involves agentic AI workflows on government cloud. What This Role Is Not Model training or fine-tuning. This is deployment engineering, not research. Data science or statistical modeling. The AI here is document understanding and classification, not predictive analytics. Frontend development. The deliverable is an Excel catalog and a report, not a web app. Sales or client acquisition. Data-Sleek's leadership manages the client relationship; you focus on delivery. Engagement & Compensation Remote, US-based. Occasional on-site travel to client facilities for hardware deployment and workshops may be needed. An average of 2–3 trips for the first engagement may be possible. Compensation. $40-$55/hour Why Join Data-Sleek? At Data-Sleek, you'll lead AI deployments in environments most engineers never touch — government cloud and on-premise systems where commercial tools simply aren't an option. Your work will directly shape how defense and aerospace clients adopt AI, and you'll build a reusable capability the company grows around. We focus on doing the right thing architecturally rather than selling the most expensive option, and we give our engineers the autonomy to deliver real solutions for real constraints. How to Apply If you've shipped real LLM deployments with real constraints, we'd like to hear from you. Please submit: Your resume A brief note describing one LLM deployment you've shipped — what model, what infrastructure, what data source, and what went wrong. Data-Sleek® is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all contractors.