ML Research Engineer

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory•Laurel, MD

7d•Onsite

About The Position

The Artificial Intelligence group in JHU/APL’s Research and Exploratory Development Department (REDD) is seeking new graduates to contribute directly to research programs targeting foundational advances with cross-mission impact. The AI group exists within the Intelligent Systems Center (ISC), a facility that is home to over 100 researchers specializing in AI, robotics, neuroscience, and complex systems. Many programs supported by the ISC provide opportunities to publish and present unclassified work at leading conferences. As a member of our team, you will receive hands-on mentorship from senior scientists while taking meaningful ownership of research and software development. You will design and implement experiments involving foundation models, agents, and/or autonomous systems; develop research software and testbeds using high-end GPU and HPC resources; analyze results, communicate findings, and contribute to technical publications; and translate open-ended research questions into prototype capabilities for advancing national security.

Requirements

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or Engineering.
Hands-on experience conducting AI/ML research through a university lab, internship, capstone, substantial coursework, or independent project.
Proficient in Python programming with experience using PyTorch.
Able to obtain an Interim Secret security clearance by your start date and can ultimately obtain a Top Secret level clearance.
U.S. citizenship.

Nice To Haves

Active portfolio of open-source software projects on GitHub.
Experience directing AI coding assistants to accelerate implementation while maintaining software quality, security, documentation, and maintainability.
Experience building applications or conducting research with foundation models using tools such as HuggingFace Transformers, Pytorch, Jax, and other related libraries.
Experience deploying autonomous AI agents using orchestration libraries such as PydanticAI, LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, or other related libraries.
Experience developing software for robotic systems using ROS/ROS2.
Experience running compute jobs on an HPC cluster using Slurm.
Authored or co-authored a conference paper, journal article, workshop paper, preprint, poster, or technical report.

Responsibilities

Design and implement experiments involving foundation models, agents, and/or autonomous systems.
Develop research software and testbeds using high-end GPU and HPC resources.
Analyze results, communicate findings, and contribute to technical publications.
Translate open-ended research questions into prototype capabilities for advancing national security.