Data Scientist

General Dynamics Information Technology • USA VA Home Office (VAHOME), VA

7d • $81,349 - $103,500 • Remote

About The Position

GDIT is currently seeking a Data Scientist to support its NASA programs. The role is embedded within the Digital Innovation & Integration Service Capability (DIISC), a team within the Aerospace Capabilities Portfolio Office (ACPO). ACPO consolidates aerospace capabilities across multiple NASA Centers, and this role focuses on making scattered data findable, understood, and trusted by mapping lineage, establishing a data catalog, setting metadata standards, and driving adoption across the community.

Requirements

• Master’s in Library and Information Science (MLIS/MLS) with a data curation, research data management, or informatics focus, or a related information or data degree with demonstrated cataloging and metadata practice.
• US Citizenship and ability to obtain relevant agency clearance is required.
• 5+ years in a data librarian, research data services, data curation, or metadata and catalog role.
• Hands-on experience running a data catalog or metadata management platform (e.g., DataHub, Atlan, Collibra, Alation, Informatica, Microsoft Purview, Amundsen), or equivalent experience managing a metadata repository or catalog.
• Able to embed with the data team and genuinely understand the work they do (pipelines, data flows, how data is produced and used), enough to capture lineage and metadata accurately and earn the team’s trust. They do not need to build pipelines or do the engineering or data science themselves.
• Command of metadata standards, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, and data dictionaries.
• Demonstrated ability to drive adoption of a catalog, standard, or shared data practice across multiple teams.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to translate between technical and program audiences.

Nice To Haves

• Working knowledge of data engineering practice: pipelines and orchestration, warehouses and lakes, and transformation workflows, and how metadata and lineage are produced along the way.
• Working knowledge of data science practice: how teams source, prepare, and use data for analysis and modeling, and what they need to trust and reproduce it.

Responsibilities

• Catalog and describe the portfolio’s data: create clear, consistent, searchable records for datasets so people can find what exists, understand what it is, and judge whether they can use it.
• Build and maintain taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, a shared business glossary, and descriptive metadata and documentation standards.
• Set the cataloging and metadata standards the data team must follow, and hold the team accountable to them.
• Help analysts, engineers, and program staff find the right data, interpret it correctly, and understand its provenance and limits.
• Onboard new datasets and retire stale ones: document provenance and ownership, apply sensitivity and controlled (CUI) classification, and flag data quality.
• Map the portfolio’s data lineage end-to-end: sources, systems, owners, flows, transformations, and downstream consumers.
• Work with the team’s manager to select and onboard an enterprise data catalog tool (e.g., DataHub, Atlan, Collibra, Alation, or Microsoft Purview): evaluate, stand up the platform, define the metadata model, and integrate it with portfolio data sources.
• Ensure the catalog integrates cleanly with the team’s data orchestration tool (Dagster).
• Define and track metadata-completeness, documentation, and freshness metrics.
• Drive catalog adoption across the portfolio, and serve as the point of contact for what data exists, where it lives, and how it should be described and used.

Benefits

• Variety of medical plan options, some with Health Savings Accounts
• Dental plan options
• Vision plan
• 401(k) plan offering the ability to contribute both pre and post-tax dollars up to the IRS annual limits and receive a company match
• Full flex work weeks where possible
• Variety of paid time off plans, including vacation, sick and personal time, holidays
• Paid parental, military, bereavement and jury duty leave
• 15 days of paid leave per calendar year to be used for vacations, personal business, and illness
• 10 paid holidays per year
• Paid Family Leave program provides a total of up to 160 hours of paid leave in a rolling 12 month period for eligible employees
• Short and long-term disability benefits
• Life insurance
• Accidental death and dismemberment insurance
• Personal accident insurance
• Critical illness insurance
• Business travel and accident insurance

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level