Data and Automation Engineer (Federal Grants AI Platform)

Location: Remote (U.S.), with occasional on-site meetings in the Washington, DC metropolitan area Employment type: Full-time Eligibility: U.S. citizenship required; must be able to obtain and maintain a Federal Public Trust background investigation
About The Role
Zenius is hiring a data and automation engineer to build and run the data and workflow layer of an AI-assisted audit resolution platform for a Federal grantmaking agency. The platform supports a team of grants and audit specialists working through a large volume of single audit and Office of Inspector General audit findings on Federal grant awards. You will bring audit data in from public Federal sources and the agency's own systems, turn audit report packages into structured records that people can review, and build the queues, logs, and dashboards that show every finding and every action taken on it.
This is production engineering on real Federal records in an authorized cloud environment. Every output must be traceable: where the data came from, which model or rule produced the result, how confident it was, and which person accepted or changed it. Engineers who build logging, tests, and evaluation in from the first commit will do well here. The platform supports decisions; agency officials retain all decision-making authority.
What You Will Do
Build and operate data pipelines that retrieve audit records from the Federal Audit Clearinghouse public data interface, ingest extracts from the agency's audit tracking system through read-only access, and take in Inspector General audit reports.
Reconcile every load so that what was retrieved equals what was stored, and surface exceptions for the analyst team to clear.
Implement the finding record as an append-only ledger: one entry per finding, with every machine and human action added to it and nothing overwritten.
Build document extraction for single audit packages that captures the finding number, program and Assistance Listing number, compliance requirement, condition, cause, effect, questioned costs, repeat-finding status, corrective action plan, and prior-year status.
Implement decision-support components on the platform's agent layer so that every output carries a source citation, a confidence score, and the name of the reviewer who accepted or changed it.
Build the workflow layer: work queues, review and approval steps, audit logging, and dashboards the client can open at any time.
Instrument drift and quality monitoring, set confidence thresholds and re-routing rules, and take any component that falls below threshold out of service until it is retested.
Build and maintain held-out evaluation sets drawn from real audit reports, and run the evaluations each capability must pass before it is used on live work.
Implement the security controls that apply to application development, logging, and configuration management, and supply the evidence needed for the system's security authorization.
Produce the technical documentation, configurations, prompts, workflow definitions, and evaluation sets that are delivered to the client under the contract.
Deliver in short increments alongside the Intelligent Automation Lead, the security specialist, and the audit resolution team, demonstrating working software and acting on feedback from the people who use it.
What You Bring
A bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, or a related field and one to two years of relevant experience, or four or more years of relevant experience in place of a degree.
Hands-on experience building data pipelines or document-processing workflows, whether through professional work, internships, or substantial academic or personal projects. We value working software you can show and explain, such as a code repository, a portfolio, or a project walkthrough.
Strong Python and SQL, with hands-on experience in pipeline orchestration (for example Azure Data Factory, AWS Glue, or Apache Airflow) and relational databases such as SQL Server or PostgreSQL.
Experience implementing retrieval-augmented generation or a comparable AI application pattern with human review controls, confidence scoring, and citation of sources.
Experience extracting structured data from PDFs and other unstructured documents, using OCR, layout parsing, or model-based extraction, with accuracy measured against labeled samples.
Experience integrating systems through REST APIs and building internal workflow tools or dashboards (for example Power BI).
Sound engineering habits: version control, CI/CD, automated testing, code review, and clear written documentation.
U.S. citizenship and eligibility for a Federal Public Trust background investigation.
Nice to have
Experience in a FedRAMP Moderate environment such as Azure Government or AWS GovCloud.
Section 508 accessible dashboard development.
Prior work on a Federal grants, audit, or financial management system, or familiarity with single audit reporting packages and the Federal Audit Clearinghouse.
Experience with model evaluation and monitoring, such as evaluation harnesses, drift detection, or model cards.
Experience with append-only or event-sourced data stores and audit logging.
A current or prior Federal suitability determination or security clearance.
Working knowledge of the NIST SP 800-53 Moderate controls that apply to application development, logging, and configuration management.
About Zenius
Zenius Corporation is a HUBZone-certified small business headquartered in Leesburg, Virginia. Since 2015, we have supported Federal agencies with grants management, program and project management, independent verification and validation, financial management, acquisition support, and digital modernization services. Zenius has been recognized on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies and the Financial Times list of the Americas' fastest-growing companies. We are a small team that values judgment, craftsmanship, and direct accountability to the client.
Zenius Corporation is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or protected veteran status.

Work arrangement
Yes