Data Scientist and/or Systems Analyst

Our group is seeking a highly motivated and experienced Data Scientist and/or Systems Analyst to contribute technical leadership across a range of programs. This role is well-suited to someone who can work hands-on across the AI/ML lifecycle - from generative modeling and data strategy through rigorous evaluation - while helping shape methods and tools that generalize across data modalities and mission applications. As Technical Staff, you will also be a principal investigator for projects, lead teams, define research plans, and provide technical oversight.

The work of the group is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary. Accordingly, the backgrounds of the researchers and program teams are diverse. As Technical Staff, you will work with your team to understand and support success by prototyping capabilities and solutions and providing recommendations regarding technology capabilities, requirements, architectures, and pipelines to provide guidance and meet the needs of the U.S. government in developing advanced technologies and algorithms. You will bring a systems-analysis mindset to connect data, model development, and capability evaluation into coherent, reusable technical approaches. You will work with your team to understand and support mission success by:

• Analyzing user needs and operational constraints
• Providing recommendations regarding technology capabilities, requirements, architecture, and data/ML pipelines
• Designing, prototyping, and evaluating analytics and modeling solutions
• Designing and conducting technology verification and validation, including testing software and systems with users or subject-matter experts in realistic settings
• Collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, including scientists, engineers, and analysts-to translate technical work into mission-relevant capabilities
• Communicating technical findings and recommendations clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

Requirements:

• Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics, Bioinformatics, Biomedical Engineering, Computational Biology, Computer Science, Data Science, Physics, Statistics, or a related scientific field. In lieu of a Ph.D., a master's degree with 7+ years of directly related experience may be considered. Additional experience beyond the Ph.D. is a plus.
• Strong analytical and systems-thinking skills, with the ability to design approaches that generalize across data types and use cases.
• Ability to frame the "big picture" motivations, operational constraints, and stakeholder needs around an issue, while knowing when and how to dig into the underlying technical details.
• Demonstrated experience applying AI/ML techniques to answer research questions or solve practical technical problems.
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively and to lead small to medium teams of diverse backgrounds and skillsets to execute a technical vision and deliver program success.
• Demonstrated skills in scientific writing and clear presentation of technical materials to varied audiences, including both technical experts and non-technical stakeholders (e.g., clinicians, sponsors, program managers).
• This position is onsite only.

Experience with one or more of the following is a plus:

• Developing solutions in cloud environments such as AWS, and working with data lakes/warehouses
• Data curation, annotation, integration, harmonization, and building scalable ML data pipelines
• Simulation environments, digital twins, or synthetic data generation for training and validating algorithms
• Systems analysis using modeling and simulation to understand key trade-offs in complex systems
• Designing or applying evaluation frameworks and metrics for AI model/system performance and trustworthiness
• Health or healthcare-related data/analytics, including electronic health record (EHR) data structures and clinical data standards
• Hands-on experience with generative modeling techniques and/or LLM-based tool development (e.g., RAG architectures, prompt engineering, model evaluation)