AI Systems Engineer

Peregrine Advisors is a firm founded on a simple conviction: the best solutions come from the people closest to the problem, given real ownership and the tools to deliver. We are a data and technology innovation hub and a Benefit Corporation working at the center of the federal government's mission to deliver for client stakeholders and the US public, looking for highly motivated contributors who thrive when trusted to own a hard problem and equipped to deliver the solution.

Your first assignment

Your first assignment is to build the backend that powers how a federal agency processes its filer applications: the services and secure application programming interfaces (APIs) that move each submission through document processing, validation, and decisioning. The work is real, hard, and it matters. It is also where you start, not the shape of your career here: we hire people, not seats, and we move our best to where the hardest problems are.

What you'll build

• Backend services and REST APIs in Python and FastAPI that turn a manual, document-heavy process into something fast, secure, and automated.
• The cloud behind them on Amazon Web Services (AWS): Lambda, Step Functions, API Gateway, and S3, with PostgreSQL for the data and identity handled the right way.
• In time, the firm itself: new capabilities, tools, and lines of business you help spin up.

Who you are

You have a hacker's mindset: you would rather ship a working prototype tonight than a perfect plan next week. You have built backends and APIs that hold up in production, and you move at the speed of the tools, not the clock. You experiment, fail, learn, and repeat, quickly. You would rather own an outcome than be handed a task.

What you bring

• Strong Python and hands-on experience building secure REST APIs (FastAPI or similar) on AWS.
• The backend fundamentals behind them: PostgreSQL, authentication and access control, and clean, automated delivery.
• The judgment to build in a regulated federal environment where security and auditability are not optional.

What you'll need

Sole United States citizenship and the ability to obtain a Public Trust determination are required for this initial engagement. This is a hybrid role based in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, and it requires commuting into DC regularly. Everything else, the years, the certifications, the specific tools, we ask in the application and get into during the interview.

What we offer

A high-performing team of developers, engineers, data scientists, architects, and strategists solving complex, real-world problems, with work that runs from strategy formulation to hands-on implementation. We develop people across roles and clients, with extensive onboarding and sponsored training and professional development. And Peregrine has been a Benefit Corporation from day one: public value is built into the work itself, not bolted on afterward. Work worth your best years.