Ignite IT Hub is seeking a senior Technical Lead to guide a multidisciplinary team supporting the U.S. Census Bureau's LLM Autocoder. The system converts survey write-in responses into standardized codes. Reporting to the Contract Project Manager, you will lead hands-on technical delivery, sustain American Community Survey (ACS) operations, and coordinate enhancements and expansion to other surveys and demographic projects.
Responsibilities
• Translate Government priorities into clear technical tasks, acceptance criteria, estimates, dependencies, and delivery plans with the Project Manager.
• Guide architecture, method selection, and integration across data science, AI/ML engineering, MLOps, and evaluation while contributing to code reviews and troubleshooting.
• Coordinate production issue resolution, assess mission impact, remove technical blockers, and turn recurring problems into planned improvements.
• Lead design and peer reviews. Verify test evidence, security and privacy controls, documentation, and rollback readiness before recommending Government approval of production changes.
• Coordinate pilots and model improvements using baseline comparisons, agreed performance thresholds, and review with Government subject matter experts.
• Explain technical findings, tradeoffs, risks, and recommendations clearly to Government technical staff and leadership; escalate delivery and capacity concerns promptly.
• Maintain technical decisions and task status, mentor team members, and coordinate documentation, cross-training, and knowledge transfer.
Requirements
Required qualifications
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, data science, or a related field, or equivalent relevant professional experience.
• 10+ years in software, data, or AI/ML delivery, including 3+ years leading technical teams and hands-on experience supporting production ML or NLP systems.
• Strong Python skills and experience with AWS, data pipelines, interfaces, Git, automated testing, and controlled software releases.
• Practical experience with LLM applications, text classification, model evaluation, and translating experiments into maintainable production capabilities.
• Demonstrated ability to manage technical dependencies, resolve complex issues, and communicate with both specialists and nontechnical stakeholders.
Preferred qualifications
• Census, federal statistical, survey-processing, or other sensitive-data program experience.
• Experience with coding taxonomies, hybrid LLM and matching approaches, and delivery within Government security and change-control processes.
Conditions of employment. Position contingent on contract award. Must be able to obtain and maintain applicable Census Special Sworn Status and Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials, follow confidentiality requirements, and support Census core business hours and coordinated critical processing runs.
Benefits
Benefits
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Flexible spending account
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Professional development assistance
- Referral program
- Tuition reimbursement
- Vision insurance
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, data science, or a related field, or equivalent relevant professional experience
- 10+ years of experience in software, data, or AI/ML delivery
- 3+ years leading technical teams
- Hands-on experience supporting production machine learning or NLP systems
- Strong Python skills
- Experience with AWS, data pipelines, interfaces, Git, automated testing, and controlled software releases
- Practical experience with LLM applications, text classification, and model evaluation
- Ability to translate experiments into maintainable production capabilities
- Ability to manage technical dependencies, resolve complex issues, and communicate with technical and nontechnical stakeholders
- Census, federal statistical, survey-processing, or sensitive-data program experience
- Experience with coding taxonomies, hybrid LLM and matching approaches, and government security and change-control processes
- Ability to obtain and maintain applicable Census Special Sworn Status and Personal Identity Verification credentials
- Ability to support Census core business hours and coordinated critical processing runs
What We Do
Passion and Purpose. We are a start-up borne out of a group of architects and engineers providing solutions that transform with digital breakthroughs. We Partner - Partnership to us means being all in - on the ground, in the weeds, producing and delivering mission solutions. We Innovate - driving digital innovation and experimentation to improve decision services for the American people. We Engage – co-creating to deliver HCD (human centered design) to solve tour customers digital challenges. We Deliver – and take pride and accountability in everything we do. We are Ignite IT. Ignite IT deploys teams that are customer-obsessed, delivering a CX (Customer Experience) renaissance to our Private and Public Sector customers. We combine Commercial BX (Business of Experience) with customer delivery experts to benefit agencies to innovate and improve services and launch new digital solutions. We have built a company foundation dependent on each of our employee’s success, and provide a healthy, engaging, community where learning and knowledge sharing are encouraged. We empower our employees to be bold, continually innovate and propose new ideas to improve processes and services. We engage daily on work that touches millions of people, always focusing on positive impacts and results. We enable mission services that enable Enterprise companies to succeed in digital transformation, protect Border Agents, deploy the Army Reserve and National Guard, providing decision dominance to make America safer. We apply these digital services across the Private and Public Sectors to include include HHS, DHS, AOUSC and Army. We aim to continually raise the bar for our customers to expect more from their digital services. For more information, visit www.igniteitservices.com
