Quantitative Research Associate – National Security

Institute for Defense Analyses; Alexandria (VA); On-site; USD 69,000 - 194,000; Full time

Job summary

The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) invites applications for an entry-level Research Associate to support qualitative and quantitative research in national security. You will work in a collaborative team, developing models (Python) and assisting senior researchers to analyze and present findings.

Ideal candidates will hold a STEM degree, demonstrate programming experience, and possess strong communication skills.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's in mathematics, statistics, economics, physics, computer science, data science, operations research, or related disciplines with a strong foundation in applied math or statistics.
• Candidates must demonstrate experience with one or more programming language or statistical software (e.g., Python, R, Julia, Stata, MATLAB, C, Java, etc.)
• Candidates must demonstrate strong written and oral communication skills; ideal candidates contribute to team efforts.
• Preferred: training in quantitative or qualitative information collection, data normalization, and text analytics; experience as a research assistant; Bayesian stats, machine learning, predictive analytics, geospatial analyses; GPU/high-throughput/distributed computing.
• U.S. citizenship is required.

Responsibilities

• Works as part of a team on model development and software implementation using a shared code repository and version control; builds discrete event simulation models in Python to analyze supply chains.
• Contributes to writing project reports and analyses; completes research tasks and drafts reports on findings.
• Prepares and maintains project documentation and databases; conducts literature reviews.
• Maintains bibliographic and statistical data; handles data curation, cleaning, and coding; summarizes research findings and contract information.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Skills

Programming experience

Data analysis

Team collaboration

Strong communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in STEM/related

Tools

Python

R

Julia

Stata

MATLAB

C

Java

Job description

The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) invites applications for an entry-level Research Associate to support qualitative and quantitative research in national security. You will work in a collaborative team, developing models (Python) and assisting senior researchers to analyze and present findings.

Ideal candidates will hold a STEM degree, demonstrate programming experience, and possess strong communication skills.