2026 Graduate – Software Engineer; Data Scientist; Ontologist – Threat Analytic Systems

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory•Laurel, MD

About The Position

Are you excited about applying your education toward building creative solutions for our nation’s greatest challenges? Are you searching for a collaborative environment that prioritizes impact, innovation, and personal development? If so, the Threat Analytic Systems Group is looking for someone like you to join our APL team! We are a team of software engineers, data scientists, and knowledge representation experts who partner with experts across a wide range of domains including countering weapons of mass destruction (CWMD), special operations, intelligence analysis, biothreat security, online disinformation, and disease surveillance. Our goal is to research and build innovative AI-enabled systems that can identify and prioritize relevant data in a timely and scalable manner and accelerate our sponsors’ ability to observe and act on threat activities. We need talented engineers, scientists, and ontologists with creativity, curiosity, and a strong drive for learning to succeed!

Requirements

A Bachelor’s degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or related technical field.
Have strong problem solving, analytical, and organizational skills, in addition to excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Have experience working successfully within a team environment
Are able to obtain an Interim Secret Clearance by your start date and ultimately obtain Top Secret level clearance. If selected, you will be subject to a government security clearance investigation and must meet the requirements for access to classified information. Eligibility requirements include U.S. citizenship.
Software Engineers: Experience in computer science fundamentals and Java, Python, JavaScript, and web development
Data Scientists: Experience in Python
Data Scientists: Familiarity with machine learning and scientific libraries (e.g., PyTorch, Tensorflow, Scikit-Learn, Pandas, Numpy)
Data Scientists: Interest in working with engineers to integrate models and algorithms into analytic pipelines
Ontologists: A foundation in formal logic

Nice To Haves

A Master’s degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering or related technical field.
Software Engineers: Familiarity with Agile software development practices, full life cycle software development, or feature development
Software Engineers: Familiarity with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) best practices
Software Engineers: Familiarity with containerization (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes)
Software Engineers: Experience with machine learning libraries and techniques
Software Engineers: Experience with mobile development and Kotlin
Data Scientists: Experience creating experiments, developing approaches, and testing hypotheses for data-driven challenges
Data Scientists: Familiarity with Python best practices
Data Scientists: Familiarity with foundational machine learning approaches
Data Scientists: Experience with information extraction and natural language processing techniques
Ontologists: Experience building RDF/OWL ontologies

Responsibilities

Design, implement, test, and deploy algorithms, machine learning models, and AI-enabled systems in a dynamic, fast-paced, and team-oriented environment.
Interact with sponsors, analysts, and other end users to understand their mission goals, gather requirements, and innovate new ways to improve efficiency.
Survey academic literature, propose new research, engineer solutions, and utilize DevOps/MLOps strategies to overcome deployment challenges.
Document and present work on current research and development activities