Senior AI/ML Engineer

SRC; Fairborn (OH); On-site; USD 93,000 - 116,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid time off

Retirement contribution

Tuition support

Job summary

SRC, Inc. seeks a Senior AI/ML Engineer to lead machine learning and generative AI efforts for ISR, EW, advanced sensing, and decision science missions. You will own problems, not tickets, and guide data strategies, model development, and deployment toward program transitions.

Strong Python/PyTorch and LLM toolchain experience required. Dayton, OH area compensation ranges with emphasis on field-ready, rigor-driven ML systems, collaboration with engineers, and customer-facing technical material.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, or a related technical discipline, plus 4+ years of relevant experience; or a Master's degree plus 2+ years.
• Demonstrated record of taking ML systems from concept to working capability, not just prototype notebooks.
• Strong proficiency in Python and deep expertise in PyTorch (or equivalent), including custom training loops, datasets/dataloaders, mixed precision, and profiling.
• Practical experience with the modern LLM toolchain: Hugging Face Transformers, PEFT, TRL or equivalent, and serving/inference frameworks such as vLLM, TGI, or Ollama.
• Substantive experience with at least one of: generative AI and LLM fine-tuning, deep learning for perception or signal domains, or reinforcement learning.
• Rigorous approach to evaluation and the statistical literacy to back it up - confidence intervals, significance, and the difference between a real improvement and noise.
• Experience mentoring or technically leading other engineers.
• Ability to explain technical work and its limitations to program managers, customers, and executives.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical approach for AI/ML tasks of moderate scope, from problem formulation and data strategy through model development, evaluation, and transition
• Design dataset strategies for domains where labeled data is scarce or expensive, including synthetic data generation, simulation-to-real transfer, active learning, and weak supervision
• Own model development end to end: architecture and method selection, training, fine-tuning, distributed training where warranted, hyperparameter strategy, and error analysis
• Build evaluation methodology using task-grounded metrics, statistically sound comparisons, ablations, adversarial and out-of-distribution test sets, and honest characterization of failure modes
• Lead generative AI efforts including model selection across open-weight and commercial options, supervised and preference-based fine-tuning (SFT, DPO, GRPO), RAG architecture, agentic and tool-using systems, and guardrail design
• Apply reinforcement learning where it fits the problem, and be able to articulate when it doesn't
• Ddrive model efficiency and deployment readiness: quantization, distillation, pruning, export and runtime optimization, and the compute/latency/accuracy tradeoffs that govern fieldable systems
• Establish and enforce reproducibility practices through experiment tracking, data and model versioning, containerized environments, and CI for ML code
• Guide the technical and research efforts of less experienced engineers; review their work, develop their judgment, and raise the technical rigor of the team
• Contribute to proposals, white papers, and internal R&D pitches, and assist in presenting findings and recommendations to customers
• Partner with algorithm engineers, software engineers, and program staff to migrate models from research code into real-time and embedded applications
• Identify technical risks early and propose alternative approaches before a program discovers them

Skills

Python

PyTorch

ML systems development

Model evaluation

Reinforcement learning

Generative AI

Leadership

Communication

Experiment tracking

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering/Math/Physics/Statistics

Master's degree in a related field

Tools

Hugging Face Transformers

PEFT

TRL

vLLM

TGI

Ollama

DeepSpeed

Ray

Job description

SRC, Inc. is currently seeking a Senior AI/ML Engineer to lead the technical execution of machine learning and generative AI efforts supporting ISR, EW, advanced sensing, and decision science missions. This role owns problems, not tickets. You will take ambiguous mission needs, identify the technical approach, build the datasets and models that address it, produce defensible evidence that the result works, then guide it toward transition into a program. The work ranges across classical ML, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and the generative AI stack, and it demands judgment about which of those is the right tool for a given problem. You will lead tasks of moderate scope, guide the technical efforts of less experienced engineers, contribute to proposals and customer-facing technical material, and set the standard for experimental rigor on the team. The successful candidate is someone who has shipped models into use, has seen the gap between benchmark performance and field performance, and knows how to close it.

What You’ll Do

• Lead the technical approach for AI/ML tasks of moderate scope, from problem formulation and data strategy through model development, evaluation, and transition
• Design dataset strategies for domains where labeled data is scarce or expensive, including synthetic data generation, simulation-to-real transfer, active learning, and weak supervision
• Own model development end to end: architecture and method selection, training, fine-tuning, distributed training where warranted, hyperparameter strategy, and error analysis
• Build evaluation methodology using task-grounded metrics, statistically sound comparisons, ablations, adversarial and out-of-distribution test sets, and honest characterization of failure modes
• Lead generative AI efforts including model selection across open-weight and commercial options, supervised and preference-based fine-tuning (SFT, DPO, GRPO), RAG architecture, agentic and tool-using systems, and guardrail design
• Apply reinforcement learning where it fits the problem, and be able to articulate when it doesn't
• Drive model efficiency and deployment readiness: quantization, distillation, pruning, export and runtime optimization, and the compute/latency/accuracy tradeoffs that govern fieldable systems
• Establish and enforce reproducibility practices through experiment tracking, data and model versioning, containerized environments, and CI for ML code
• Guide the technical and research efforts of less experienced engineers; review their work, develop their judgment, and raise the technical rigor of the team
• Contribute to proposals, white papers, and internal R&D pitches, and assist in presenting findings and recommendations to customers
• Partner with algorithm engineers, software engineers, and program staff to migrate models from research code into real-time and embedded applications
• Identify technical risks early and propose alternative approaches before a program discovers them

What You’ll Bring

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics, or a related technical discipline, plus 4+ years of relevant experience; or a Master's degree plus 2+ years
• Demonstrated record of taking ML systems from concept to working capability, not just prototype notebooks
• Strong proficiency in Python and deep expertise in PyTorch (or equivalent), including custom training loops, datasets/dataloaders, mixed precision, and profiling
• Practical experience with the modern LLM toolchain: Hugging Face Transformers, PEFT, TRL or equivalent, and serving/inference frameworks such as vLLM, TGI, or Ollama
• Substantive experience with at least one of: generative AI and LLM fine-tuning, deep learning for perception or signal domains, or reinforcement learning
• Rigorous approach to evaluation and the statistical literacy to back it up - confidence intervals, significance, and the difference between a real improvement and noise
• Experience mentoring or technically leading other engineers
• Ability to explain technical work and its limitations to program managers, customers, and executives
• Excellent written and verbal communication

Ways to Stand Out

• Experience with distributed training (FSDP, DeepSpeed, Ray) and large-scale data pipelines
• Deployment of models to constrained or edge environments: ONNX, TensorRT, TorchScript, quantized inference, or embedded GPU/SoC targets
• Multimodal model work including vision‑language models, RF/sensor‑conditioned models, or cross‑modal retrieval
• Experience applying ML to radar, SAR, RF, EO/IR, acoustic, or other sensor data, and familiarity with the phenomenology involved
• Production MLOps experience: Kubeflow, MLflow model registry, feature stores, monitoring, and drift detection
• Familiarity with DoD mission domains, technology transition pathways, and the realities of test and evaluation for autonomous or ML-enabled systems
• Publications, open‑source contributions, or competition results demonstrating technical depth
• Understanding of AI assurance topics including model cards, red‑teaming, uncertainty quantification, and responsible AI practice in a defense context
• Active DoD security clearance
• MS/PhD in a related technical discipline

What Sets Us Apart?

SRC, Inc., a not-for-profit research and development company, combines information, science, technology and ingenuity to solve "impossible" problems in the areas of defense, environment and intelligence. Across our family of companies, we apply bright minds, fresh thinking and relentless determination to deliver innovative products and services that are redefining possible. When you join our team, you'll be a part of something truly meaningful - helping to keep America and its allies safe and strong. You'll collaborate with more than 1,400 engineers, scientists and professionals - with 20 percent of those employees who have served in the military - in a highly innovative, inclusive and equitable work environment. You'll receive a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits package that includes four or more weeks of paid time off to start, 10 percent employer contribution toward retirement, and 100 percent tuition support.

Total compensation for this role is market competitive. The anticipated salary range for this position based out of Dayton, OH is estimated at $93,000 to $116,000 annually. The actual salary will vary based on applicant's experience, skills, and abilities, geographic location as well as other business and organizational needs. SRC offers competitive benefit options, for more details please visit our website.

Non-Discrimination Statement

Individuals seeking employment are considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or age, or status as a protected veteran or disability except as strictly required by applicable law. You are being given the opportunity to provide the following information in order to help us comply with federal and state record keeping, reporting, and other legal requirements, including requirements under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act, 29 U.S.C. 793, and the Vietnam Era Veterans' Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), 38 U.S.C. 4212.

Learn more about SRC:

About Us
Employee Benefits
Awards & Recognition
Security Clearance

• Location
  Fairborn,
  Ohio
  
• Employment Type Full-Time Salaried
• Experience Required 4+ Years
• Education Required Bachelors Degree
• Security Clearance Requirement Must meet eligibility requirements
• Travel % 10