Senior Machine Learning Engineer

STR • Arlington, VA

7d

About The Position

STR’s Intelligence Division researches and develops advanced analytics and machine learning-based solutions to solve challenging problems related to national security. Our team consists of passionate and motivated engineers with advanced degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics, and data science, who are seeking opportunities to use their deep technical knowledge and creativity to tackle some of the hardest problems that our customers face. Our projects span multiple different data modalities and incorporate advanced algorithms, deep learning, and statistical techniques to uncover patterns in social media, structured and unstructured text, time series, geospatial, and imagery data, and must operate under challenging constraints not typically found in the commercial world. The tools and technologies we develop have real world impact and US Government analysts and operators use them to enable intelligence activities around the globe. As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will turn cutting-edge AI/ML research into production systems that solve critical national security problems. Working as part of a multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, and domain experts, you will bridge the gap between prototype and product by hardening solutions, building scalable backend services, and creating polished user interfaces with intuitive workflows. You will build software with AI/ML at its core, ranging from classical statistical methods to frontier language models, deployed across a diverse set of platforms including cloud, on‑prem, desktop, mobile, and edge devices. In addition, you will collaborate closely with customers to understand mission needs, rapidly prototype capabilities, and iterate based on user feedback.

Requirements

• Active Secret security clearance, for which U.S citizenship is needed by the U.S government
• BS degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field
• 6+ years of professional software engineering and/or machine learning research experience (or equivalent experience depending on degree)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively within cross‑functional teams, give and receive constructive feedback, and mentor others
• Comfortable building from partial or ambiguous requirements and iterating quickly based on user feedback and changing mission needs
• Experience developing, training, and deploying machine/statistical learning models using modern Python‑based frameworks
• Experience running models on NVIDIA GPUs
• Experience containerizing and deploying software using Docker, and on cloud platform
• Experience designing and implementing REST APIs
• Experience designing data models and working with relational databases
• Fluency in Python and its ecosystem
• Proficiency in at least one systems‑level language with manual or low‑level memory management
• Proficiency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Solid understanding of software engineering principles, including testing, scalability, observability, maintainability, and performance optimization

Nice To Haves

• experience with a modern frontend framework such as Svelte or React is a plus

Responsibilities

• Partner directly with customers, stakeholders, and end users to translate mission needs into technical requirements and iterate based on real-world feedback
• Drive technical excellence by providing leadership and championing software engineering best practices across multidisciplinary teams
• Architect loosely coupled systems prioritizing interpretability, maintainability, and feature growth
• Bridge the gap between research and production by implementing novel capabilities into existing live systems
• Engineer robust backend services, scalable APIs, and optimized database models
• Develop polished, intuitive, and responsive user interfaces in close collaboration with UI/UX designers
• Orchestrate the deployment and maintenance of applications across cloud, desktop, mobile, and edge environments, including air-gapped systems
• Build and optimize CI pipelines and manage execution runners to maintain code quality and reproducible builds
• Contribute to the full software development lifecycle, including strategic project planning, rigorous code reviews, and comprehensive testing

Benefits

• STR is committed to creating a collaborative learning environment that supports deep technical understanding and recognizes the contributions and achievements of all team members.

What This Job Offers

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