Applied AI Engineer
Content + Source + Freshness • 15 Dec 2025 • 95% confidence
Offer value
Moderate value offering due to a strong mission focus and established branding, though salary range is not as competitive and there are expectations for public service commitment.
- Opportunity to impact public knowledge through technology.
- Collaborative team with a mission-driven focus.
- Recognized innovative company in the public sector.
- Compensation may be lower than private sector equivalents.
Pros
- Mission-driven work that impacts societal understanding of data.
- Collaborative team with a strong public service ethos.
- Previous recognition as an innovative company.
Cons
- Lower compensation compared to tech companies.
- May require alignment with specific mission-driven values.
- Expectations for significant contribution to public discourse.
Who it's for
Mid-level • Hybrid / onsite
Good fit
- Socially conscious engineers focused on data transparency.
- Team players excited about public service.
- Individuals interested in government data analytics.
Not recommended for
- Candidates seeking high compensation in tech sectors.
- Those unhappy with a mission-driven focus.
- Individuals looking for corporate-style job structures.
Motivation fit
Key skills
About the job
Applied AI Engineer - Bellevue WA
The Organization
At USAFacts, we believe facts deserve to be heard. We are on a mission to provide a comprehensive and unbiased look at our country by the numbers. Democracy thrives on serious, reasoned, and informed debate. And we’re here for it.
Founded and funded by Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, USAFacts answers questions around government spending and outcomes. While these are basic questions, finding the answers is hard. But it’s also pretty exciting. We pull together data from thousands of jurisdictions to normalize, contextualize, and visualize these metrics so the data is approachable and understandable.
Every day, we learn something about our country, how to make complex data understandable, and how to make the American people interested in the numbers. We’re a collaborative group and are always learning from each other, too. The team is mission driven, with no political agenda nor commercial incentive; we do this work purely as a public service.
Oh, and to top it off? USAFacts was named to Fast Company’s List of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2025! Learn more about us at usafacts.org and linkedin.com/company/usafacts.
We’d love for you to bring your talents and your curiosity to come make a difference!
The Opportunity
At USAFacts, we are committed to providing unbiased and transparent data about the United States. We are seeking an Applied AI engineer specializing in SOTA (state-of-the-art) Machine Learning
(ML)/AI models, with a strong emphasis on Large Language Models (LLMs) and frameworks like LangChain, to help us build real-world, customer-facing Generative AI applications based on government data.
The Applied AI Engineer will leverage pre-trained LLMs (such as OpenAI’s GPT series) and multi-agent orchestration frameworks to develop, deploy, and optimize AI-powered products and workflows. This role focuses on productizing generative AI capabilities for end users, using existing models to create efficient, accurate, and explainable experiences. An idea candidate will be familiar with platforms like Databricks and Azure, and have experience developing low-latency, high accurate agentic workflows and know how to measure, evaluate, and improve them.
Key Priorities & Responsibilities
- Build and deploy scalable AI-powered applications in collaboration with senior engineers, contributing to design and architecture decisions over time.
- Learn and contribute to prompt engineering strategies, with guidance on building agentic workflows, memory systems, and multi-step reasoning.
- Integrate LLM-powered features into existing platforms and products, often via APIs, and ensure seamless user experiences.
- Support the development and monitoring of evaluation and observability processes for AI systems, learning LLMOps practices in a hands-on environment.
- Work with retrieval techniques (e.g., RAG, vector DBs like Azure AI Search, Chroma) for contextaware applications
- Prototype, test, and optimize AI-powered applications, including retrieval-augmented generation, workflow automation, and agentic experiences.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to align AI features with user needs and business goals, gaining exposure to product and platform thinking.
- Stay current on advancements in AI technologies, frameworks, and best practices, and evangelize AI capabilities internally and externally.
- Provide technical support, documentation, and training to facilitate adoption and effective use of AI solutions.
- Participate in technical discussions, architecture reviews, and sprint planning.
- Contribute to knowledge sharing and technical documentation.
Qualifications
Required Experience and Skills:
- Proficiency in Python with hands-on experience building applications and APIs.
- Strong interest and early exposure to LLMs and frameworks such as LangChain, LlamaIndex or similar.
- Exposure to Evaluations and ML/AI Observability.
- Familiarity with retrieval techniques (e.g., vector databases, RAG) is a plus.
- Excellent problem-solving, communication, and teamwork skills, with the ability to explain complex AI concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
- Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
Preferred Experience and Skills:
- Proven engineering background with over 5 years of experience, including 2+ years focused on AI/ML systems
- Advanced Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
Compensation & Benefits
Compensation
The starting cash compensation range for the Applied AI Engineer role in Bellevue includes a hiring base salary range of $127,000 to $160,000, plus a 10% performance bonus target opportunity.
The base salary maximum for the role is $191,700 per year. Individual pay increases are assessed annually based on multiple factors such as demonstrated skill in the role and context, progress and performance against goals, and increased experience.
Featured Benefits & Perks
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employee and dependent premiums entirely paid for by Ballmer Group
- 3 weeks of paid vacation annually
- 11 paid holidays, plus paid days off for the weekdays between Christmas and New Year
- 80 hours of paid sick leave annually
- 401(k) with 6% employer contribution
- 2:1 Ballmer Family Giving Match for charitable contributions, and $50 donation per volunteer hour
- Professional development reimbursement up to $2,000 per year
- Employer-paid life insurance of 3x salary up to $1,000,000
- Fertility and family building benefits, including back-up childcare reimbursement
- Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options
- Parking or transportation (Orca card) up to $250 monthly
- Cash stipend of $300/month (for cell phone, wellness expenses, etc.)
- Identity theft protection
Location & Hybrid Work
The position is based in Bellevue, WA.
Our organization practices intentional hybrid work. All USAFacts employees are expected to work onsite Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Mondays and Fridays remain flexible work-from-home or office workdays.
