Staff Data Scientist-Contingent

Fantastic opportunity to practice data science and oversee an open-source data collection activity for a government customer in Washington D.C. (Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling). The position leads a team of data engineers and collectors that focus on open-source data extraction, transformation, storage, and analysis to gain valuable mission-specific insights from the data. The scientist will work closely with data engineers to improve data pipelines, semantic models, database stores, and query methods; and communicate insights gained and recommend ways-forward to both the team and customer.

(KEY SKILLS: “Data Science”, “Statistics”, “Open Source Data Analysis”, “Big Data”, “Cloud Technology”, “Leadership and Communication Skills”)

The data scientist will be able to perform the following tasks:

Extract features from large data stores containing open source publicly/commercially available information (PAI/CAI) in a wide range of possible formats, including JSON, XML, raw text logs, industry-specific encodings, and graph link data. Such data often contains bad records, partial records, errors, or other forms of “noising.”

Use software tools and write interface and query routines to support analysis of data drawn from natural language processing and computer vision to identify objects in text, image, video, and audio files.

Execute data science methods using common programming/scripting languages: Python, Java, R (statistics).

Develop operational analytics that result in workflow efficiency and/or extract new insights from collected data holdings. Leveraging available technology, work closely with data engineers and collectors to bridge the activity’s technical gaps, optimize data extraction; and lead/help the team to create, validate, and implement data models to solve problems and answer questions.

Apply descriptive and inferential statistics to describe data and make predictions about the data, including statistical tests to determine confidence for a hypothesis, common summary statistics (e.g. mean, variance, and counts), fit distributions to datasets and use those distributions to predict event likelihoods. Also, enhance open source collection requirements and support data evaluation objectives through statistical analysis and providing subject matter expertise during evaluation exercises.

The data scientist will be required to convey his/her findings through scientific visualization, written products, oral briefings, and interactive data visualization to both technical and non-technical customers.

Staff Data Scientist-Contingent Required Experience & Skills:

• Must be a US Citizen with an active TS clearance with SCI eligibility and willing to submit to a counterintelligence (CI) polygraph
• Bachelor’s degree in applicable field (data science, computer science, mathematics, computational analytics, computational finance, engineering, etc.) along with
• Data Science experience (5-7 years)
• Understanding of open source “big data” analytic methodologies and technologies
• Advanced use of Python, R, SQL, and other statistical software
• Excellent communication and people skills

Staff Data Scientist-Contingent Preferred Experience & Skills:

Above all, we value passion, a desire to learn, and teamwork. We are confident that if you possess the right attitude, work ethic, and skill set that you could succeed in the role. In addition to the experience and skills above, if you have any of the following you will be able to accelerate your effectiveness and impact.

• Active TS-SCI security clearance
• CI polygraph taken within past 5 years
• Prior Intelligence Community work experience
• Project Management Prof
• Master’s degree in applicable field (data science, computer science, mathematics, computational analytics, etc.)

Experience with the following:

• Scala
• Natural language processing and computer vision
• Parallel/distributed computing software development
• Deeplearning4j, Torch, Tensor Flow, Caffe, Neon, NVIDIA CUDA Deep Neural Network library (cuDNN), OpenCV, and distributed data processing frameworks (e.g. Hadoop (including HDFS, Hbase, Hive, Impala, Giraph, Sqoop), Spark (including MLib, GraphX, SQL and Dataframes)
• Geospatial software and/or tools
• Parallel/distributed computing
• Project Management experience

About Us:

Applied Research Associates, Inc. (aka ARA) is an employee-owned international research and engineering company known for providing technically superior solutions to complex and challenging problems in the physical sciences. We were founded in Albuquerque, NM in 1979 as the disco era was, thankfully, closing out and the personal computer era was beginning. We employ over 1,400 professionals and continue to grow. ARA offices throughout the U.S. and Canada provide a broad range of technical expertise in defense, civil, and health technologies, computer software and simulation, systems analysis, environmental technologies, and testing and measurement. Around ARA you are equally likely to hear a conversation about Kubernetes clusters as you are a debate on merits of a reverse polish notation (RPN) calculator!

While this is all of the Year One and Beyond stuff, Day One is highly impressive too. These are things like our competitive salary (DOE), Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) & 401(k) with matching program, benefits package which includes medical, dental vision, flex spending, telehealth services, company-paid life & disability insurance including paid maternity disability leave through our company-paid short-term disability benefit, domestic partner coverage, dependent care flex spending, daycare discounts, pet insurance, relocation opportunities, floating holidays, tuition reimbursement, professional development as well as flexible schedules with remote/work from home options. ARA also prides ourselves on having a challenging culture where innovation & experimentation are the norm. At ARA, employees are our greatest assets, so we give our employees the tools, training, and opportunities to take active roles as owners. The motto, “Engineering and Science for Fun and Profit” sums up the ARA experience. The company realizes employee ownership spawns greater creativity and initiative along with higher performance and customer satisfaction levels.

ARA is passionate about inclusion and diversity in our workplace. In 2018 40% of our new employees voluntarily self-identified as protected veterans. (Source-AAP EOY 2018 Veterans Data Collection Report). We are also very proud of our Women’s Initiative Network (WIN) whose purpose is to motivate, support, and encourage professional career development for women to maximize career and professional accomplishments. Additionally, the Southeast Division looks not only for the right skills, but also for a cultural fit. We seek colleagues who will contribute to the unique culture that makes ARA such a great place to work. Some of the social impact aspects we have implemented at our division include monthly get-togethers, team outings to local baseball games in the summer, board game lunches, holiday party, corn hole tournaments, chili cook-offs and so on. For additional information and an opportunity to join this unique workplace, please apply at careers.ara.com.

Experience

• 5 - 7 years: Data Science

Education

• Bachelors or better in Computer Science or related field

Licenses & Certifications

• Security Clear Top Secret

• Project Mgmt Prof

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor’s legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)