Configuration / Release Engineer — AI Reliability Engineering

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, a related specialized area or field is required or equivalent combination of education and relevant work experience plus a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience; or Master's degree plus a minimum of 6 years of relevant experience.

CLEARANCE REQUIREMENTS:: Department of Defense Secret security clearance is required at time of hire. Applicants selected will be subject to a U.S. Government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information. Due to the nature of work performed within our facilities, U.S. citizenship is required.

Responsibilities for this Position

What You'll Own

• Configuration baselines. Establish and maintain baselines for all AI artifacts — code, prompt libraries, model versions, agent configurations, training datasets, ontologies, policies, and documentation. Every artifact has a version, an owner, and a history.
• Release management. Coordinate and control releases across pods. Track what version of what is in which environment. Manage promotion from dev through staging to production.
• Change control. Implement change tracking for all AI artifacts. Every change has a record — what changed, who changed it, who approved it, and why. Support audit and compliance requirements.
• Rollback capability. Ensure every deployment can be reversed. Build and test rollback procedures so that when something goes wrong in production, recovery is a known process, not an improvisation.
• CI/CD pipeline governance. Work with engineers to ensure build, test, and deployment pipelines enforce configuration controls automatically. Controls should be built into the pipeline, not bolted on as a review step.

What You Won't Own

• Application development or AI engineering — you control what ships, not what gets built
• Production operations or incident response — that's the SRE's domain
• Business requirements or backlog prioritization

What Makes This Role Different

• AI configuration management is a new discipline. Prompt libraries, model versions, and agent workflows don't fit neatly into traditional CM tools and processes. You will define how it works.
• In a defense environment, knowing exactly what is in production is not optional. Audit, compliance, and security all depend on configuration accuracy. Your work is the foundation for all of that.
• You will work across multiple pods and enforce consistency without creating bottlenecks. The goal is control that enables velocity, not control that slows it down.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related field, plus 8 years of experience
• Production experience with configuration management — you have maintained baselines, managed releases, and controlled changes for software systems in production
• Experience with CI/CD tools and practices — Git, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar. You understand pipeline-driven deployment and how to build controls into it.
• Experience with versioning and artifact management — you have managed more than just source code; configurations, data assets, documentation, or similar
• Strong organizational and documentation skills — your baselines are accurate, your change records are complete, and other people can understand your systems
• S. citizenship required. Department of Defense Secret security clearance is required at time of hire.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AI/ML systems — you understand that AI artifacts (models, prompts, training data) require different CM approaches than traditional software
• Experience in defense, aerospace, or regulated industries where configuration control has compliance implications
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, CloudFormation) and container registry management
• Experience building or improving CM processes — you have designed a configuration management system, not just operated within one

What Sets You Apart

• You can answer "what's in production right now?" for any artifact, at any time, with confidence.
• You build controls that engineers actually follow because they're built into the workflow, not bolted on top of it.
• You have rolled back a production deployment and it went smoothly because you planned for it.
• You understand that configuration management exists to enable speed, not prevent it. Control without agility is bureaucracy.
• You have managed artifacts that aren't source code and figured out how to version, track, and control them.

Details

• Remote — 100% telework
• 9/80 schedule
• Defense industry experience is not required

Salary Note

Combined Salary Range

Company Overview

General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) engineers a diverse portfolio of high technology solutions, products and services that enable customers to successfully execute missions across all domains of operation. With a global team of 12,000+ top professionals, we partner with the best in industry to expand the bounds of innovation in the defense and scientific arenas. Given the nature of our work and who we are, we value trust, honesty, alignment and transparency. We offer highly competitive benefits and pride ourselves in being a great place to work with a shared sense of purpose. You will also enjoy a flexible work environment where contributions are recognized and rewarded. If who we are and what we do resonates with you, we invite you to join our high-performance team!

Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans