Data Scientist (Hybrid)

Job Title: Data Scientist

Location: Falls Church, Pentagon, Alexandria, or Arlington

Workplace: Hybrid (must be able to commute to one of the above offices 2-3 times per week)

Clearance Required: must have an active Top-Secret (TS) clearance (must be able to achieve a TS/SCI clearance with scope)

Position Overview

Supports the Department of Defense's (DoD) Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer's (CDAO) Mission Analytics / Core Analytics Products, Search Products Portfolio, and Unstructured Data Search Enhanced by AI/ML (UD/SEAM).

Major Duties/Tasks

• Designs, configures, develops, tests, and supports informatics and data science solutions for a
  
  

wide array of technical use cases;

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including data scientists and software engineers to
  
  

integrate AI solutions developed by other elements of CDAO or the DoD community into Search

Portfolio products when appropriate

• Optimize AI models for performance, scalability, and efficiency, leveraging cloud-based
  
  

resources and distributed computing frameworks, specifically Apache Spark/Databricks. Ability

to adapt code base to also run using GPU enabled Kubernetes clusters.

• Stay updated on and contribute to the latest advancements in AI research, applying new
  
  

findings to improve Search Portfolio products

• Manage the lifecycle of AI/ML components used in Search Portfolio products from research and
  
  

development to deployment and optimization

• Applies analytical methodologies to diagnose data-related challenges, implement solutions, and
  
  

evaluate performance;

• Documents and presents requirements, design alternatives, and findings to team members and
  
  

clients;

• Ability to develop strategic, baselined, data modeling processes; ability to accurately determine
  
  

cause-and-effect relationships; and

• Experience with integrated development environments, data integration, data visualization,
  
  

data mining, and analysis tools.

• Maintains and guides the development of common libraries and tools used by multiple teams.
• Aids in formulating a strategy on how to achieve rapid prototyping
  
  

Requirements

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s degree plus 7-10 years experience, or a Masters Degree plus 5 years of
  
  

experience.

Required Skills/Experience

• Experience with ML fields, e.g., natural language processing, computer vision, statistical learning
  
  

theory

• Hands-on experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models, text
  
  

embedding, semantic query, use of generative AI for text, and retrieval augmented generation

(RAG)

• Familiarity with data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation techniques
  
  

essential for machine learning projects

• Strong understanding of various machine learning algorithms, including supervised and
  
  

unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, and neural networks

• Experience with version control systems like Git, enabling effective collaboration and code
  
  

management

• Experience in an ML engineer or data scientist role building ML models
• Experience writing code in Python, R, Scala, Java, C with documentation for reproducibility
• Experience using Apache Spark/Databricks distributed compute environments for AI/ML
  
  

workloads

• Experience handling petabyte size datasets, diving into data to discover hidden patterns, using
  
  

data visualization tools, writing SQL, and working with GPUs to develop models

• Experience with cloud-based data persistence products, especially RDS PostgreSQL and
  
  

PostgreSQL extensions such as pgvector.

• Experience writing and speaking about technical concepts to business, technical, and lay
  
  

audiences and giving data-driven presentations

• Experience with multi-intelligence and multi-domain systems and understanding
  
  

of current object and activity-based models in the community.

Preferred Skills And Qualifications

• An active TS/SCI clearance
  
  

Experience With

• the DoD’s CDAO, Advana, or other CDAO products
• Agile methodology
• AI-enhanced search
• AI/ML for information retrieval and insight extraction
  
  

About Elder Research, Inc

People Centered. Data Driven

Elder Research is a fast growing consulting firm specializing in predictive analytics. Being in the data mining business almost 30 years, we pride ourselves in our ability to find creative, cutting edge solutions to real-world problems. We work hard to provide the best value to our clients and allow each person to contribute their ideas and put their skills to use immediately.

Our team members are passionate, curious, life-long learners. We value humility, servant-leadership, teamwork, and integrity. We seek to serve our clients and our teammates to the best of our abilities. In keeping with our entrepreneurial spirit, we want candidates who are self-motivated with an innate curiosity and strong team work.

Elder Research believes in continuous learning and community - each week the entire company attends a “Tech Talk” and each office location provides lunch. Elder Research provides a supportive work environment with established parental, bereavement, and PTO policies. By prioritizing a healthy work-life balance - with reasonable hours, solid pay, low travel, and extremely flexible time off - Elder Research enables and encourages its employees to serve others and enjoy their lives.

Elder Research, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or protected veteran status and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.

Elder Research is a Government contractor and many of our positions require US Citizenship.