Head of Applied AI & Spatial Data Science

MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES, INC.; Herndon (VA); On-site; USD 182,000 - 242,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) with company match

Mental health resources

Student loan repayment assistance

Adoption reimbursement

Pet insurance

Job summary

Vantor is seeking an experienced Applied AI leader to guide a high-performing team across geospatial AI, multimodal learning, and large language models. You will define the AI science roadmap, translate customer and mission needs into concrete priorities, and oversee the productionalization of AI-driven solutions delivering actionable insights and decision support.

You will champion agentic AI adoption, streamline scientific workflows, and establish safe, auditable practices across model

Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics, or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of experience in machine learning, applied AI, data science, AI engineering, decision science, or related technical discipline.
• 5+ years of experience leading technical teams including applied scientists, ML engineers, AI researchers, data scientists, or equivalent roles.
• Strong depth in multimodal AI, vision-language models, LLMs, reasoning systems, agentic AI, computer vision, geospatial AI, remote sensing, predictive modeling, causal inference, experimentation, or large-scale ML systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead, grow, and develop a high-performing team of Applied AI Scientists across geospatial AI, multimodal learning, vision-language models, LLMs, reasoning systems, predictive modeling, and production ML.
• Define and execute the Applied AI Science roadmap translating needs into priorities, milestones, and deployable capabilities.
• Guide design and productionalization of AI-driven applications transforming geospatial, imagery, structured, and contextual data into insights and decision intelligence.
• Champion adoption of agentic AI to accelerate research, experimentation, evaluation, documentation, code review, and production support.
• Oversee end-to-end ML pipelines from data ingestion to retraining and monitoring; ensure scalability, latency, security, and reliability.

Skills

Leadership experience

Multimodal AI

Geospatial AI

Experimentation & causal inference

Production ML pipelines

Education

MS or PhD in Computer Science / ML / AI / Applied Math

Tools

Cloud ML platforms

Distributed training

Containerized deployment

Model serving & monitoring

Job description

Vantor is seeking an experienced Applied AI leader to guide a high-performing team across geospatial AI, multimodal learning, and large language models. You will define the AI science roadmap, translate customer and mission needs into concrete priorities, and oversee the productionalization of AI-driven solutions delivering actionable insights and decision support.

You will champion agentic AI adoption, streamline scientific workflows, and establish safe, auditable practices across model