Senior Machine Learning Research Scientist - Frontier Lab

Carnegie Mellon University • Pittsburgh, PA

1d • Onsite

About The Position

The Senior Machine Learning Research Scientist is a senior individual contributor and technical leader in the SEI AI Division’s Frontier Lab. The role shapes and executes applied research and prototype development for government and Department of War missions, spanning both research and engineering. The scientist works with substantial autonomy, remains hands-on in development, evaluation, and delivery, represents technical work to customers and stakeholders, and helps guide the lab’s research direction.

Work may focus on agentic AI for mission workflows; AI test, evaluation, verification, and validation (TEVV); mission-tailored language models; multimodal learning and sensor fusion; or AI at the tactical edge. The role grounds technical decisions in mission needs and develops prototypes, evaluation methods, and evidence that can support transition to operational settings. It also involves technical leadership, customer engagement, mentorship, research agenda shaping, and building connections within internal and external AI/ML communities.

The position is full-time and requires onsite work five days per week at an SEI office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or Arlington, Virginia. Travel to SEI offices, sponsor sites, conferences, and offsite meetings is approximately 10%. The successful candidate must undergo a background investigation and be eligible to obtain and maintain a Department of War security clearance.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, or a related field with 10 years of relevant experience; or a master’s degree with 8 years; or a Ph.D. with 5 years.
• Deep expertise in one or more Frontier Lab-aligned areas, such as agentic systems, LLM reliability and evaluation, computer vision evaluation, robustness and assurance, TEVV pipelines, multimodal learning, or edge machine learning.
• Strong engineering capability to build and maintain high-quality prototypes, evaluation infrastructure, and repeatable experimentation workflows.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to represent technical work credibly to senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical workstreams and coordinate execution across multiple people.
• Able and willing to work onsite at an SEI office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, or Arlington, Virginia, five days per week.
• Flexible to travel to SEI offices, sponsor sites, conferences, and offsite meetings (approximately 10%).
• Must be able and willing to undergo a background investigation and be eligible to obtain and maintain a Department of War security clearance.
• Sound technical judgment, including making architectural and methodological decisions and balancing ambition with mission constraints.
• Ability to convert mission needs into tractable technical plans, measurable success criteria, and credible evaluation evidence.
• Scientific leadership, including maintaining rigor, identifying flawed assumptions, and improving evaluation quality and research practices.
• Ability to elevate team performance through hands-on mentorship and strong technical standards.
• Initiative to identify risks and opportunities, propose new work, and create alignment without directive management.
• Ability to plan work under ambiguity, maintain execution cadence, and escalate risks early.

Nice To Haves

• Experience leading applied research projects that produce effective prototypes, mission-relevant evaluation outcomes, or transitioned methods.
• Publications at strong venues such as NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, relevant workshops, or MLCON, and/or demonstrable impact through applied research artifacts such as benchmarks, evaluation suites, open-source work, or technical reports.
• Experience designing and operating TEVV efforts, including evaluation pipelines, robustness analysis, calibration or uncertainty work, regression suites, and scenario-based evaluation protocols.
• Experience building agentic capabilities integrated with tools, data systems, and human workflows in decision-support, planning, or analytic contexts.
• Experience with secure or operational environments and delivery constraints typical of government settings.
• Experience shaping a technical roadmap or research portfolio aligned to sponsor priorities and lab strategy.

Responsibilities

• Execute work in operational context by understanding users, workflows, constraints, success criteria, and outcomes.
• Lead technical execution by defining tasking, sequencing work into realistic milestones, maintaining delivery quality, and delegating appropriately.
• Design and conduct studies, build prototypes and reference implementations, and produce evidence-backed insights for potential operational transition.
• Establish evaluation strategies and test pipelines to assess performance, robustness, reliability, and trustworthiness in mission-representative scenarios.
• Serve as the primary technical interface when appropriate; translate mission goals into measurable technical outcomes and communicate progress, decisions, and risks to stakeholders.
• Mentor junior staff and teammates, improving research rigor, engineering practice, and delivery habits.
• Track frontier developments, share insights, and help shape research directions and future work selection.
• Manage multiple priorities, maintain an execution cadence, and resolve blockers with minimal oversight.
• Build research culture through internal talks, reading groups, and workshops, and engage with external AI/ML communities, professional societies, consortiums, working groups, and conferences.

What This Job Offers

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