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Northrop Grumman · 13 hours ago

Staff Software Engineer - AI/ML Specialist - R10219038

Huntsville, AL

Full-time

Onsite

Lead/Staff

$204K/yr - $307K/yr

10+ years exp

Northrop Grumman is a leading technology company with a focus on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives. They are seeking a Staff Software Engineer - AI/ML Specialist to support the design and implementation of AI/ML capabilities for missile defense mission areas, collaborating with engineers and domain experts to enhance decision-support activities.

AerospaceData IntegrationManufacturingRemote SensingSecurity

Growth Opportunities

No H1B

Security Clearance Required

U.S. Citizen Only

Responsibilities

The selected 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

Represent the Systems Engineering and Integration Team to Missile Defense Agency to internal and external stakeholders in reviews and technical interchanges related to AI/ML

Collaborate with team Subject Matter Experts to ensure technical quality of engineering and analysis products

Create and present briefings within the team and to Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and supporting stakeholders

Duties will include leading small teams of engineers in the development of products

Qualification

Artificial Intelligence techniquesMachine Learning techniquesData management strategiesModel evaluationData-centric workflowsAI/ML lifecycleSoftware engineering practicesTechnical documentationOral communicationWritten communicationTeam collaborationCritical thinking

Required

Bachelor's Degree in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics) discipline from an accredited university and 12 years of related experience, or a Master's Degree and 10 years of related experience, or 8 years of related experience with a PhD

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

Applicant must demonstrate ability to think critically to develop and capture concepts in technical papers, presentations, and discussions

Must possess good oral and written communication skills

Capable of working both independently and within a small team environment

The successful candidate must also be willing to assume a technical leadership role at times

Ability and willingness to work on a customer site

Ability and willingness to travel up to 10% of the time

Applicants must have a current active in-scope U.S. Government DoD issued Top Secret security clearance at the time of application which is required to start

Applicants must be able to obtain SAP access within a reasonable time after beginning employment

Preferred

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

Demonstrated experience with missile defense applications or similar domains (air combat, air defense, intercept of ballistic targets, intercept of non-ballistic targets, space vehicles, sub-orbital mechanics, countermeasure mitigation and discrimination, etc.)

Knowledge of ballistic and advanced threat systems (e.g., aero-maneuvering, hypersonic, hyper-glide, countermeasures, etc.)