Lead Data Scientist - TS/SCI

Vantor•Herndon, VA

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Vantor is seeking a Lead Data Scientist to serve as the technical authority for the development of an advanced analytics capability. This role supports pattern recognition, anomaly detection, predictive analytics, graph analytics, agent-based modeling, and operational decision support within a Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance (UTS) environment. The objective is to enhance Joint Force survivability by characterizing the UTS threat and providing a mission-agnostic risk-management tool. The enterprise will leverage this analysis and these tools to increase isolated personnel (IP) survivability through enhanced evasion training, planning, and execution, while bolstering force protection for PR task forces. The Lead Data Scientist will guide the technical vision, ensure scientific rigor, oversee machine learning development, and manage the transition of analytical capabilities into operational environments. To be eligible, candidates must be U.S. Citizens and possess an active U.S. Government security clearance at the TS/SCI level with CI polygraph. Employment is contingent upon verification of clearance status. Certain roles may be subject to U.S. export control laws, requiring U.S. person status.

Requirements

US Citizen and must have an active TS/SCI clearance, with ability to obtain CI Poly.
12+ years of relevant experience.
Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, Physics, Operations Research, Engineering, or related discipline.
Strong technical leadership experience, to include project roadmap development.
Strong coding proficiency in Python and SQL, with experience writing production-quality, maintainable code.
Hands-on experience with data manipulation, feature engineering, machine learning libraries (e.g., scikit-learn, PyTorch, TensorFlow), and automation tools.
Experience AI/ML programs.
Ability to clearly communicate technical concepts and analytical results in writing and verbally.
Must be able to work on-site in Herndon, Va.

Nice To Haves

Working knowledge of R is a plus.
Experience with agent-based modeling.
Experience supporting operational environments and/or Government R&D projects.

Responsibilities

Lead technical execution of the analytics program.
Provide technical vision, strategy, and leadership for the project roadmap and execution.
Define overall AI/ML architecture.
Lead feature engineering strategy.
Guide supervised, unsupervised, and deep learning development.
Direct graph analytics and causal inference activities.
Lead explainable AI implementation.
Oversee validation methodology.
Mentor technical staff.
Present technical findings to Government leadership.
Support transition planning.
Automate and maintain data extraction, cleaning, processing, and analysis workflows using Python, SQL, and ETL tools under established best practices.
Process and analyze structured and unstructured datasets using big data or cloud-native frameworks (e.g., Spark, Hadoop, or managed cloud services).
Develop, test, and evaluate predictive models and statistical analyses to support mission-focused use cases.
Contribute to end-to-end data science and data engineering workflows, from data preparation and feature engineering through model development and results delivery, with guidance from senior team members as needed.
Write clear, well-structured documentation of methods, assumptions, and results; assist with briefings or presentations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Collaborate closely with data scientists, engineers, analysts, and mission partners to refine requirements and iterate solutions.