Job Summary:
Applied Research Associates (ARA) is seeking a highly capable Senior Algorithm Engineer/Scientist to join a multidisciplinary team advancing mission critical technologies for U.S. Government and defense customers. The role involves developing innovative algorithms, mentoring team members, and ensuring alignment of technical approaches with operational needs.
Responsibilities:
• Development of novel and innovative algorithms independently, in close collaboration with other technical performers, and/or with other algorithm subject matter experts.
• Provide new ideas and approaches to increase efficiency and accuracy of existing workflows.
• Bridge research and engineering, ensuring that algorithms not only work in theory or benchmarks but function reliably in real-world, constrained environments.
• Mentor others, lead new initiatives, and help expand ARA’s AI/ML and algorithmic capabilities.
• Engage with customers and end-users to align technical approaches with operational needs and ensure successful outcomes.
• Communicate technical insights clearly through reports, briefings, and customer interactions; act as a technical resource and mentor for other scientists and engineers.
• Shape new research directions, support proposal development, lead R&D thrusts, and contribute to capability growth within the organization.
Qualifications:
Required:
• B.S. + 8 years, M.S. + 6 years, or Ph.D. + 3 years of relevant experience or equivalent combination.
• U.S. Citizen.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and collaboratively within multidisciplinary teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to convey advanced technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated leadership experience, such as mentoring, project leadership, or developing new technical capabilities.
Preferred:
• Experience developing novel algorithms for perception, inference, estimation, autonomy, and/or decision making.
• Ability to operate across the full research-to-deployment pipeline.
• Experience reasoning about constrained, real-world operational environments and designing algorithms that remain robust under uncertainty.
• Strong proficiency with programming languages such as MATLAB, Python or something similar.
• Experience with PyTorch, TensorFlow, or similar ML frameworks.
• Demonstrated ability to write clean, maintainable, well tested code.
• Experience contributing to production quality or mission critical software systems.
• Experience writing proposals, technical reports, publications, and/or delivering customer briefings.
• Ability to support multiple projects, adapt to new technical areas, and work effectively in fast paced research settings.
• Experience with or ability to improve upon curation and maintenance of scientific databases, as well as validation methodologies of engineering models utilizing those databases.
Company:
ARA provides research, engineering, and technical support services. Founded in 1979, the company is headquartered in Albuquerque, USA, with a team of 1001-5000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.