Defense and National Security AI Jobs (2026)

Defense AI on TixelJobs is a small and specific slice: 54 live listings as of September 2026, and the titles leave little doubt about the work. Machine learning engineer with an active secret clearance, perception engineer for all domain defense, lead research scientist with clearance required, applied AI engineer and scientist for autonomous defense, and a new grad robotics engineer on government projects. Twenty two roles are classified as machine learning engineer, five as robotics and embodied AI, and one as computer vision.

Striveworks is the most frequent poster with 7 listings, followed by OpenAI with 6, SpaceX with 5, Mind Foundry and Anthropic with 4 each, and GrayMatter Robotics and Baringa with 3. The two frontier labs are hiring applied AI engineers for government and international customers, a newer kind of defense role than the perception and autonomy work at the hardware companies. The US holds 14 located listings, the UK 8 and Germany 2, and 61 percent of the hub is flagged remote, though a role that names a clearance is open only to people eligible to hold one.

Pay is unusually visible. Forty six percent of listings state a salary in US dollars, close to three times the share on most hubs, and the median midpoint among them is about $198,000 a year. The level mix is 28 mid level, 12 senior, 8 lead, manager or architect and 3 staff or principal. Only 3 listings were added in the past week, so revisit every couple of weeks rather than daily.

Search the hub for clearance, secret or federal to separate roles that require eligibility from those that do not, and read that section first, since it is rarely negotiable. For the hardware side, Anduril, the largest poster in the robotics and embodied AI hub, is better reached through its company page, and the autonomous vehicle jobs hub overlaps on perception work.