Senior Technical Lead

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.