Senior Data Scientist - AI/ML Specialist

Education Requirements:

Requires a Bachelor's degree in Engineering, or a related Science, Technology or Mathematics field. Also requires 10+ years of job-related experience, or a Master's degree plus 8 years of job-related experience.

Clearance Requirements:

Department of Defense Secret security clearance is required at time of hire. Applicants selected will be subject to a U.S. Government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information. Due to the nature of work performed within our facilities, U.S. citizenship is required.

ROLE AND POSITION OBJECTIVES:

The Systems Engineering and Integration Team is seeking an Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) Specialist to support the design, guidance, and implementation of AI/ML-enabled capabilities for missile defense mission areas. The successful candidate will contribute across multiple phases of the mission lifecycle, supporting analytical, modeling, simulation, and decision-support activities related to detection, tracking, discrimination, fire control, and engagement functions within a complex system-of-systems environment. The AI/ML Specialist will collaborate with systems engineers, domain experts, and software developers to identify appropriate problem formulations and opportunities for the application of AI/ML techniques. Responsibilities include developing and curating training and evaluation datasets from diverse sources, defining data management and labeling strategies, and designing scalable training, testing, and validation infrastructure consistent with program constraints and security requirements. The candidate will be responsible for guiding the selection, development, and integration of AI/ML models into existing analytical, modeling, and simulation frameworks, ensuring alignment with system architectures, interfaces, and performance objectives. This includes supporting model evaluation, uncertainty characterization, robustness assessments, and lifecycle considerations such as retraining, configuration management, and traceability. The AI/ML Specialist will also contribute to the establishment of best practices, standards, and governance for AI/ML usage, including documentation, verification and validation approaches, and coordination with broader digital engineering and systems engineering processes. Emphasis will be placed on explainability, testability, and integration within mission-relevant workflows, while maintaining compliance with applicable policies, security requirements, and program constraints. The AI/ML Specialist will provide guidance and subject matter expertise to the Digital Ecosystem and Platforms team for the SE&I Team's AI adoption strategy. Key tasks include identification, evaluation, and integration of Large Language Model(s), as well as use case specific AI tooling such as SysML modeling and Integrated Development Environment (IDE) plug-ins. This position is contingent upon contract award and continued program funding. Employment offers may be extended prior to award; however, start dates and work assignments are subject to contractual authorization.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Demonstrated experience applying multiple Artificial Intelligence and/or Machine Learning techniques (e.g., artificial neural networks, Bayesian belief networks, decision trees) to complex technical or analytical problems.
• Experience working with data-centric workflows, including data preparation, curation, labeling, and quality assessment for analytical or modeling purposes.
• Familiarity with the full AI/ML lifecycle, including model development, training, testing, validation, and iterative improvement.
• Experience collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, including systems engineering, software development, and domain subject matter experts.
• Ability to translate high-level mission or system objectives into well-defined analytical or computational problem statements.
• Experience documenting technical approaches, assumptions, and results in a clear and structured manner suitable for engineering and programmatic review.
• Understanding of basic software engineering practices, including version control, modular design, and reproducibility.
• Ability to work within established program constraints, including security, configuration management, and governance processes.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experience applying AI/ML techniques within complex, distributed, or system-of-systems environments.
  
• Familiarity with modeling and simulation, digital engineering, or analytical frameworks used to support system design, assessment, or decision support.
  
• Experience with scalable training, testing, or evaluation infrastructure, including compute resource management and automation.
  
• Exposure to uncertainty quantification, robustness analysis, model verification and validation, or performance assessment methodologies.
  
• Experience supporting data governance, model traceability, or lifecycle management in regulated or mission-critical environments.
  
• Familiarity with explainable AI concepts or techniques and their application in engineering or decision-support contexts.
• Experience working in government, defense, aerospace, or other highly regulated technical domains.
  
• Ability to communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  
• Experience supporting transition of analytical or AI/ML capabilities from development environments into operationally relevant workflows.
  
• Familiarity with hardware, programming languages, scientific computing environments, and resource management tools commonly used for data analysis and modeling to include graphical processing units (GPUs), Python / MATLAB / SQL, High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters and SLURM.

Target salary range: USD $191,146.00/Yr. - USD $212,053.00/Yr. This estimate represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors (geographic location, etc.). Actual pay may vary. This job posting will remain open until the position is filled.

General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) engineers a diverse portfolio of high technology solutions, products and services that enable customers to successfully execute missions across all domains of operation. With a global team of 12,000+ top professionals, we partner with the best in industry to expand the bounds of innovation in the defense and scientific arenas. Given the nature of our work and who we are, we value trust, honesty, alignment and transparency. We offer highly competitive benefits and pride ourselves in being a great place to work with a shared sense of purpose. You will also enjoy a flexible work environment where contributions are recognized and rewarded. If who we are and what we do resonates with you, we invite you to join our high-performance team!

Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans