Principal Engineer, Applied AI (TS/SCI)

Principal Engineer, Applied AI Hybrid, DMV area / Remote (with travel) SIXGEN's mission is to deliver agile, mission-ready cybersecurity solutions that empower government and critical infrastructure organizations to stay ahead of advanced cyber threats. We combine innovation, deep expertise, and cutting-edge capabilities to uncover vulnerabilities, protect vital systems, and ensure operational superiority in an ever-evolving digital landscape. POSITION OVERVIEW Position: Principal Engineer, Applied AI Job Type: Full Time Location: Hybrid or Remote. Travel to the DMV area and customer sites may be required. Clearance Requirements: TS/SCI Travel: Up to 10%, depending on location and customer needs ABOUT THE TEAM SIXGEN supports cyber and intelligence missions by helping government and commercial organizations overcome global cybersecurity challenges. Our highly skilled operators conduct research and assessments based on real-world threats, simulating adversaries and malicious actors to deliver actionable findings on critical assets and infrastructures. Our program planners advise mission owners to bring rapid solutions to intelligence leaders. Using innovative processes, tools, and techniques, we predict and overcome cybersecurity vulnerabilities. SIXGEN is investing heavily in applied AI as a force multiplier for our engineers, operators, researchers, and customers. Our goal is not simply to incorporate AI into existing products, but to continually identify new ways that AI-native development techniques, models, agents, and automation can change how cyber capabilities are researched, built, and operated. The Principal Engineer, Applied AI will operate at the leading edge of that effort. This is a highly technical individual contributor role for an engineer who is comfortable working ahead of established product roadmaps and engineering patterns. The Principal Engineer will continuously evaluate emerging AI technologies, development tools, architectures, and techniques; build working prototypes; test technical assumptions; and establish viable implementation paths before larger engineering teams commit to them. The role is intentionally exploratory. Rather than starting with a fully specified product requirement, this engineer will often begin with questions: Can this new approach materially improve how we build software? Can an agent perform this workflow reliably? Can a new model unlock a capability that was previously impractical? What would it take to operationalize this safely in a classified environment? The Principal Engineer will turn those questions into evidence. Success in this position means reducing technical uncertainty. The engineer will rapidly separate promising technologies from hype, demonstrate what is possible through working software, identify architectural constraints early, and hand engineering teams proven approaches they can confidently turn into durable products and mission capabilities. WHAT YOU'LL DO Explore emerging AI technologies and techniques, continuously evaluating new models, agent frameworks, developer tools, inference platforms, orchestration approaches, and AI-native software development patterns for their relevance to SIXGEN's missions and products. Build rapid technical prototypes, turning promising ideas into working software quickly enough to validate assumptions, expose limitations, and determine whether broader engineering investment is warranted. Prove technical concepts before product implementation, establishing reference architectures, integration patterns, evaluation criteria, and implementation approaches that engineering teams can build upon. De-risk new technology adoption, identifying performance, reliability, security, scalability, data, infrastructure, and operational constraints before they become downstream product problems. Advance AI-enabled software development, experimenting with coding agents, AI-assisted development environments, autonomous engineering workflows,…