Senior AI/ML Research Scientist, Frontier Lab

Aimlroles; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Carnegie Mellon University’s SEI Frontier Lab seeks a Senior Machine Learning Research Scientist to lead applied research and prototype development for government missions. The role blends research and engineering with hands-on development, evaluation, and delivery, and spans planning, analysis, and decision-support in mission contexts.

The candidate will mentor teams, publish and shape research directions, and travel (~10%) to sponsor sites, with onsite work in Pittsburgh, PA or Arlington, VA.

Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, or related field with 10 years of relevant experience; OR MS with 8 years; OR PhD with 5 years.
• Deep expertise in frontier lab areas (agentic systems, LLM reliability/evaluation, CV evaluation, robustness/assurance, TEVV pipelines, multimodal learning, edge ML).
• Strong engineering capability to build and maintain prototypes, evaluation infra, and experiments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and ability to lead technical workstreams.
• Ability to coordinate multi-person execution and influence stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Mission-context execution grounded in users, workflows, constraints, and success criteria.
• Provide technical leadership by defining tasks, milestones, and delivery quality.
• Design and run studies, build prototypes and reference implementations.
• Establish credible evaluation strategies and pipelines for performance and reliability.
• Serve as primary technical interface with customers; translate goals into measurable outcomes.
• Mentor junior staff and uplift research rigor across teams.
• Shape frontier lab direction and participate in community engagement.
• Manage time and priorities with minimal oversight.
• Foster a strong research culture through internal and external engagement.

Skills

Agentic AI

LLM reliability/evaluation

Multimodal learning

Edge ML

Education

BS in CS/EE/Stats

MS in relevant field

PhD with relevant exp

Job description

Carnegie Mellon University’s SEI Frontier Lab seeks a Senior Machine Learning Research Scientist to lead applied research and prototype development for government missions. The role blends research and engineering with hands-on development, evaluation, and delivery, and spans planning, analysis, and decision-support in mission contexts.

The candidate will mentor teams, publish and shape research directions, and travel (~10%) to sponsor sites, with onsite work in Pittsburgh, PA or Arlington, VA.