Senior Machine Learning Engineer

STR; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 155,000 - 195,000; Full time

Job summary

STR’s Intelligence Division is seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to turn cutting‑edge AI/ML research into production systems addressing national security challenges.

You’ll work with researchers, engineers, and domain experts to harden solutions, build scalable backends, and craft polished interfaces across cloud, on‑prem, desktop, mobile, and edge environments.

Qualifications

• BS degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics or related field.
• 6+ years of professional software engineering and/or machine learning research experience.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to explain complex concepts.

Responsibilities

• Translate mission needs into technical requirements and iterate based on real-world feedback.
• Provide technical leadership and advocate software engineering best practices.
• Architect loosely coupled systems prioritizing interpretability and maintainability.
• Bridge the gap between research and production by implementing capabilities into live systems.
• Develop robust backend services, scalable APIs, and optimized database models.
• Create polished, intuitive user interfaces in collaboration with UI/UX designers.
• Oversee deployment across cloud, on-prem, desktop, mobile, and edge environments.
• Build and optimize CI pipelines and execution runners for reproducible builds.
• Contribute to full SDLC, including code reviews and testing.

Skills

Python

NVIDIA GPUs

Docker

REST APIs

Relational Databases

Python Ecosystem

Systems Language

Software Engineering

Education

BS in Computer Science/Software Engineering/Data Science/Statistics/Mathematics/Physics

Tools

Docker

Job description

STR’s Intelligence Division researches and develops advanced analytics and machine learning-based solutions to solve challenging problems related to national security. Our team consists of passionate and motivated engineers with advanced degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics, and data science, who are seeking opportunities to use their deep technical knowledge and creativity to tackle some of the hardest problems that our customers face. Our projects span multiple different data modalities and incorporate advanced algorithms, deep learning, and statistical techniques to uncover patterns in social media, structured and unstructured text, time series, geospatial, and imagery data, and must operate under challenging constraints not typically found in the commercial world. The tools and technologies we develop have real world impact and US Government analysts and operators use them to enable intelligence activities around the globe.

The Role

As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will turn cutting-edge AI/ML research into production systems that solve critical national security problems.

Working as part of a multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, and domain experts, you will bridge the gap between prototype and product by hardening solutions, building scalable backend services, and creating polished user interfaces with intuitive workflows. You will build software with AI/ML at its core, ranging from classical statistical methods to frontier language models, deployed across a diverse set of platforms including cloud, on‑prem, desktop, mobile, and edge devices. In addition, you will collaborate closely with customers to understand mission needs, rapidly prototype capabilities, and iterate based on user feedback.

What You’ll Do

• Partner directly with customers, stakeholders, and end users to translate mission needs into technical requirements and iterate based on real‑world feedback
• Drive technical excellence by providing leadership and championing software engineering best practices across multidisciplinary teams
• Architect loosely coupled systems prioritizing interpretability, maintainability, and feature growth
• Bridge the gap between research and production by implementing novel capabilities into existing live systems
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• Engineer robust backend services, scalable APIs, and optimized database models
• Develop polished, intuitive, and responsive user interfaces in close collaboration with UI/UX designers
• Orchestrate the deployment and maintenance of applications across cloud, desktop, mobile, and edge environments, including air‑gapped systems
• Build and optimize CI pipelines and manage execution runners to maintain code quality and reproducible builds
• Contribute to the full software development lifecycle, including strategic project planning, rigorous code reviews, and comprehensive testing

Who you are

• Active Secret security clearance, for which U.S citizenship is needed by the U.S government
• Enjoys working hard and seeing mission impact
• BS degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field
• 6+ years of professional software engineering and/or machine learning research experience (or equivalent experience depending on degree)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively within cross‑functional teams, give and receive constructive feedback, and mentor others
• Comfortable building from partial or ambiguous requirements and iterating quickly based on user feedback and changing mission needs

Technical Skills

• Experience developing, training, and deploying machine/statistical learning models using modern Python‑based frameworks
• Experience running models on NVIDIA GPUs
• Experience containerizing and deploying software using Docker, and on cloud platform
• Experience designing and implementing REST APIs
• Experience designing data models and working with relational databases
• Fluency in Python and its ecosystem
• Proficiency in at least one systems‑level language with manual or low‑level memory management
• Solid understanding of software engineering principles, including testing, scalability, observability, maintainability, and performance optimization

Pay Information

Full‑Time Salary Range: $155,000 – $195,000

The salary range listed is based on external market data. Offers are based on factors, such as but not limited to, the candidate’s experience, education, training, key skills/critical skills, security clearances, and prevailing market and business conditions.

STR is an equal opportunity employer. We are fully dedicated to hiring the most qualified candidate regardless of race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation and pregnancy), marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

If you need a reasonable accommodation for any portion of the employment process, email us at [e-mail] and provide your contact info.

Pursuant to applicable federal law and regulations, positions at STR require employees to obtain national security clearances and satisfy the requirements for compliance with export control and other applicable laws.