Product Operations Engineer, Government Applications Special Programs
Washington, DC · Palo Alto - 1530 · 1+ years experience · Posted Sep 22, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 1+ years experience
- Location
- Washington, DC · Palo Alto - 1530
About the role
- This team focuses on operating and deploying AI capabilities (models, APIs, tools, and integrations) for U.S. federal agencies.
- Product Operations Engineers are responsible for the health, performance, and stability of the services that power these missions.
- You own the full end-to-end cycle of service reliability—from responding to outages to improving codebases and building lasting solutions.
Responsibilities
- Own the health, performance, and stability of integrations between frontier AI models (e.g., Grok family) and government systems, platforms, and data environments
- Continuously invest in documentation, metrics, monitors, and other troubleshooting tools that keep these services observable and operable
- Tackle critical issues for key government customers: respond to automated alerts, investigate reported problems, and drive lasting fixes
- Partner with agency stakeholders and adjacent product teams to understand operational needs, share technical expertise, and iterate based on real-world feedback
- Partner with agency stakeholders to understand requirements, prototype solutions, and iterate rapidly based on real-world feedback
- Address technical debt in essential codebases and inform strategic investments in core products
- Participate in on-call rotations during business hours and occasional weekends, maintaining resilient, high-uptime production systems
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering or another STEM discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience in software development in lieu of a degree
- Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed
- 20% travel may be required to government sites
- This position requires successfully obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret Security Clearance as a condition of employment
- Must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. lawful permanent resident, Refugee, Asylee, or eligible to obtain required authorizations under ITAR
Preferred qualifications
- 1+ years of hands-on software engineering experience building scalable systems, APIs, or AI/ML applications (strong Python proficiency, other languages a plus)
- Experience working with large language models, generative AI, or agentic systems—either in research, production, or applied engineering
- 1+ years of experience working on enterprise applications that serve >10,000 users distributed across geographies and time zones
- Familiarity with government or public sector technology environments
- Strong product sensibility: ability to translate ambiguous stakeholder needs into concrete technical solutions
- Demonstrated ability to write clean, maintainable, high-performance code under tight timelines
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), API orchestration
Benefits
- Long-term incentives in the form of company stock or long-term cash awards
- Potential discretionary bonuses
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Short and long-term disability insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid parental leave
- 3 weeks of paid vacation
- 10 or more paid holidays per year
Workplace
- 20% travel may be required to government sites
Skills
- Python
- AWS
- GCP
- Azure
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- API Orchestration
- Large Language Models
- Generative AI
