Senior Principal Data Scientist AI-ML SME (Analytic Superiority)

Mission Overview

The Leidos Intel Sector is looking for a premier AI/ML Subject Matter Expert (SME) to serve as a Technical Closerfor our COSS 3.0 program supporting USCYBERCOM and the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) at Fort Meade this elite role you will architect and engineer the cross-platform AI frameworks required to achieve absolute analytic superiority.

You will compress both defensive cyber operations (identifying network vulnerabilities and gaps) and offensive operations (vulnerability discovery and automated targeting) from days down to minutes. As a Technical Closer you will mentor senior technologists by exampleworking fingers-on-keyboard to solve the commands most complex technical roadblocks and pushing production-grade AI directly into multi-cloud hybrid and air-gapped mission enclaves.

Core Technical Requirements

• Platform-Agnostic Infrastructure & MLOps: Architect deploy and scale distributed AI workloads across any environment required including AWS SageMaker Google Vertex AI Azure Government and bare-metal air-gapped server racks.

• Agentic AI & Cyber Automation: Deploy and optimize tools like LangGraph CrewAI or AutoGPT to automate cyber threat identification and offensive target generation at wire speed.

• Low-Level Model Engineering & Optimization: Fine-tune open-source large language models (e.g. Llama 3 Mistral) inside secure enclaves using PyTorch or TensorFlow. Utilize NVIDIA TensorRT Triton Inference Server vLLM and quantization libraries (bitsandbytes) to compress models for high-throughput execution under strict hardware constraints.

• Advanced RAG Architectures: Direct the engineering of enterprise Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) stacks using LangChainpaired with high-performance vector databases like Milvus Qdrant or Pinecone.

• Autonomous Cyber Integration: Connect intelligent agents directly into security orchestration platforms (e.g. Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM/XSOAR) to trigger automated network defense actions and ingest massive real-time PCAP and telemetry streams via Apache Kafka/Spark.

• Polyglot Engineering: Demonstrate engineering mastery in Python Go Rust and C/C to build ultra-fast cyber tools write optimized GPU kernels and interface with distributed frameworks like Ray.

Mission & Domain Expertise

• Dual-Spectrum Operations: Proven capability to support both Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO)(log parsing behavioral threat hunting anomaly detection) and Offensive Cyber Operations (OCO)(automated vulnerability discovery exploit generation payload optimization).

• Mission Platform Orchestration: Experience integrating custom AI/ML pipelines into unified mission systems and high-value data streams found across Project Maven Palantir Foundry and tactical command frameworks.

Required Experience & Background

• Total Technical Experience: 15 years of hands-on experience in software engineering data science or distributed systems.

• Core AI/ML Focus: 5 years of specialized experience in Machine Learning Engineering deep learning or LLM optimization.

• DoD/IC Ecosystem: 35 years working within the DoD/IC cyber ecosystem specifically building tools that map vulnerabilities or accelerate targeting cycles.

• Clearance: Active TS/SCI with Polygraph..

• Work Location: On-site at Fort Meade MD (SCIF environment).

Preferred Certifications & Military Equivalency

• Industry Certifications: Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty or NVIDIA Generative AI/LLM Associate.

• Cyber Mission Force (CMF) Equivalency: Prior certification as a CMF Exploitation Analyst (EA) Digital Network Analyst (DNA) or specialized technical experience as an Army 17A/170A Navy 181X or Air Force 17D/17S.

Educational Background

• Primary Requirement: Masters Degree or PhD in Data Science Artificial Intelligence Computer Science Mathematics or a related quantitative field. Additional years of experience may be considered in lieu of degree.

If youre looking for comfort keep scrolling. At Leidos we outthink outbuild and outpace the status quo because the mission demands it. Were not hiring followers. Were recruiting the ones who disrupt provoke and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. Were already at step 30 and moving faster than anyone else dares.

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline onlyand not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job education experience knowledge skills and abilities as well as internal equity alignment with market data applicable bargaining agreement (if any) or other law.