LinkedIn Template for Cleared AI Engineers

Headline

Do not put your clearance level in your headline. "TS/SCI w/ CI Poly" in the headline is an adversary collection beacon. It tells anyone scraping LinkedIn that you are a cleared target.

Use the headline for your role and a domain hook.

Good headlines:

• AI Engineer, National Security Mission
• ML Engineer, DoD and IC Programs
• Data Engineer, Cleared Federal Programs
• AI Platform Lead, Defense

Recruiters who hire cleared engineers know to filter for these phrases. You do not need to spell out the clearance.

If a specific employer asks, put the clearance level in a private message or on the resume you send through their portal. Not on the public profile.

About section (three paragraphs)

Here is a sample. Adapt it. Do not copy the exact words.

I build and deploy AI systems for national security missions. My focus is on getting models from prototype to production in environments with strict data, security, and uptime requirements. I work across the stack: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and the boring deployment plumbing that decides whether a system actually ships.

Most of my career has been in cleared programs. I am comfortable in on-prem and air-gapped environments. I have shipped against fixed milestones, integrated with downstream operational tooling, and worked through the certification and accreditation steps required to put a system in front of real users.

I am open to senior engineering and tech-lead roles on cleared AI programs. I am not on the open market for non-cleared work. Reach out by message if you have a role and want to discuss fit.

Three things this does:

1. Names the type of work without naming any program.
2. Signals the experience level without performance numbers.
3. Closes the loop. Tells recruiters what you want and what you do not.

Experience section (sample sanitized cleared role)

Senior AI Engineer Cleared Federal Programs, 2022 to Present

• Lead engineer on a cleared DoD AI program. Own the model development, evaluation, and deployment pipeline for a production system used by a mission team.
• Built the evaluation harness the team uses to measure model quality against operational data. Reduced the time to qualify a new model release from weeks to days.
• Work across the data, model, and platform stack. Comfortable in on-prem environments with strict change-control and data-handling rules.
• Mentor two junior engineers on the team. Hold the technical bar for code review and model release.

What this does:

• Names a role and a level of seniority.
• Names the problem (model dev, eval, deployment) and the customer type (cleared DoD).
• Names the impact (faster qualification, mentorship) without a number tied to a capability.
• Does not name the program, the customer agency, the location, the system, or the contractor.

Do this for each cleared role. Vary the language. Do not put the company name as "Classified." That is a giveaway. Use your employer's actual company name. The work is sanitized; the employer is public.

Skills section

List technical skills, not programs.

• Python, Go, SQL
• PyTorch, JAX
• AWS, Azure, GovCloud regions you are familiar with at the public-marketing level
• Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform
• LLM evaluation, RAG, vector databases
• MLOps, observability, model serving

Do not list:

• Specific cleared tools or platforms not publicly marketed.
• Specific program names as a "skill."
• Adversary or target-language skills that imply a mission focus.

Engagement strategy

The people who hire cleared AI engineers do not live in your comments. They live in your inbox. Adjust accordingly.

Do:

• Post about public technical topics. New papers, open-source tools, public benchmarks.
• Reshare your employer's public news. Press releases, public contract awards, recruiting posts.
• Engage with public conferences you attended. Name the conference, not the side conversations.
• Accept connection requests from recruiters and cleared engineers you can verify.

Do not:

• Post about your day at work. Even sanitized.
• Comment on news about your customer agency. You become a quotable insider.
• Accept connection requests from accounts with no shared connections and a cleared-target-shaped profile. This is a known foreign collection pattern.
• Engage in political fights from your professional profile. Cleared employers care.

A quiet, professional profile that signals competence is worth more than a noisy one that signals access.