Principal Data Scientist
About The Position
DRS RADA Technologies, a subsidiary of Leonardo DRS, is hiring a Principal Data Scientist on-site in Germantown, MD. DRS RADA Technologies is focused on proprietary radar solutions and legacy avionics systems supporting the defense industry globally. The company is a global pioneer of AESA tactical radars for active military protection, counter-drone applications, critical infrastructure protection, and border surveillance. Join our radar defense team as a Principal Data Scientist and take a leading role in how we ensure data quality and validate the machine-learning models behind mission-critical systems. We are seeking a senior, hands-on practitioner who sets the technical standard for data integrity and classifier evaluation. You will operate within a collaborative, ego-free culture that values technical rigor, clear communication, and results over hierarchy.
Requirements
- Master’s degree in physical science or engineering discipline; PhD preferred
- A minimum of 12 years of experience
- Mastery of technologies and application domain
- Expected to have knowledge and significant experience in multiple engineering disciplines
- Must be a team player with good communications skills
- Deep proficiency in Python for data analysis, preprocessing, and modeling
- Stron foundation in applied statistics, analystics, and maching learning
- Proven ability to set technical standards and mentor others
- U.S. Citizenship required.
- This position requires an active DOD security clearance or the ability to obtain such clearance within a reasonable time after commencement of employment.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with anomaly detection, time-series analysis, and predictive monitoring.
- Experience with data-pipeline and orchestration tooling (e.g., Airflow, Spark, SQL).
- Exposure to geospatial and/or radar data concepts
- Familiarity with Databricks and/or Azure
- Experience building data-governance, lineage, or monitoring frameworks
Responsibilities
- Own and build data-quality tooling, checks, and validation frameworks for time-series and geospatial datasets, ensuring datasets are ready for the ML training pipeline.
- Lead classifier evaluation and validation. Define and apply rigorous metrics (precision/recall trade-offs, calibration, cross-validation, confusion-matrix and slice-based error analysis) and turn findings into concrete improvements.
- Establish and enforce standards for data lineage, feature preparation (temporal alignment, resampling, lag features, spatial associations), and reproducibility.
- Identify and resolve common ML data issues such as misaligned timestamps, invalid labels, class imbalance, and edge cases.
- Learn and help refine our established model-training process; partner with the team to improve the end-to-end training pipeline.
- Read, assess, and modernize legacy MATLAB tools; re-implementing in Python or other languages where it improves the process and results.
- Mentor data engineers and scientists; document assumptions, methods, and limitations; and champion technical rigor across the team.
- Provide briefings to customers, Senior Leadership, and internal stakeholders on capabilities and performance.
- Able to work independently or lead small teams and drive projects to completion.
- Work with customers to understand mission needs, review specifications and requirements, and develop solutions to best support them.
- Provide budget, cost, and schedule input for design assignments.
Benefits
- comprehensive health insurance (medical, dental, vision)
- employer matching 401(k) retirement plan
- paid time off including vacation, holidays, and sick leave (including ant state-mandated paid sick leave)
- parental leave benefits
- tuition reimbursement
- professional development support
- life and disability insurance coverage
- company contribution to a health savings account
- telemedicine
- legal insurance
- 401(k) savings plan
- wellness programs that focus on physical, emotional, and financial well-being
- programs and activities to support career-growth, professional development, and skill enhancement
- flexible work schedules with our 9/80 program
- competitive vacation
- health/emergency leave
- paid parental leave
- community service hours
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
