Senior AI/ML Engineer

Location: Springfield, Virginia, United States

Salary: $200,000–$240,000 USD per year

Company

National security technology and defense organization delivering mission and technical expertise for complex defense and intelligence challenges.

What you will do

• Design and implement machine learning models for detecting, classifying, and characterizing events and signatures in sensor data.
• Build end-to-end ML workflows covering data preparation, model development, evaluation, optimization, and deployment.
• Work with scientists, algorithm engineers, intelligence analysts, and domain experts to translate sensor phenomenology into ML solutions.
• Write modular, documented, testable, production-quality Python and integrate ML capabilities into analytical pipelines.
• Evaluate operational performance, identify failure modes and edge cases, and contribute to architecture and tooling decisions.
• Mentor junior developers, review code, establish technical standards, and prepare technical briefings and documentation.

Requirements

• Active Top Secret clearance with the ability to obtain SCI and CI Polygraph
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, data science, or a closely related technical field; an advanced degree is strongly preferred.
• 7+ years of hands-on machine learning experience developing and deploying models in operational or production environments.
• Deep knowledge of modern ML architectures, CNNs, transformers, object detection frameworks, and related methods.
• Expert-level Python programming with PyTorch, TensorFlow, or equivalent production-scale frameworks.
• Experience building complete ML pipelines and working directly with domain scientists or subject matter experts.

Nice to have

• Experience with EO/IR, hyperspectral, SAR, remote sensing, or other sensor data.
• Background in computer vision, image classification, anomaly detection, or event characterization.
• Experience with simulated or synthetic data, ML/Ops practices, and deployment in constrained or classified environments.
• Experience with large-scale geospatial or scientific datasets, cloud-based ML training, and GPU-accelerated computing.
• Scientific Python experience with NumPy, SciPy, pandas, OpenCV, or scikit-learn, plus defense or intelligence experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• Health Savings Account with company contribution.
• Paid time off, paid holidays, and paid parental leave.
• 401(k) with company match and financial wellness support.
• Training and development opportunities, award programs, and company-sponsored events.
• Focus on work-life balance and professional growth.