Machine Learning Research Scientist Jobs in Washington, DC

Job Summary:
Carnegie Mellon University is conducting research in applied artificial intelligence through its SEI AI Division. The Senior Machine Learning Research Scientist will lead applied research and prototype development for government missions, collaborating across research and engineering disciplines while ensuring technical execution aligns with mission needs.
Responsibilities:
• Execute work within the operational context—understanding users, workflows, constraints, success criteria, and outcomes—so technical decisions are grounded in real mission needs.
• Lead technical execution by defining technical tasking, sequencing work into realistic milestones, maintaining delivery quality, and delegating appropriately across the team.
• Design and run studies, build convincing prototypes and reference implementations, and produce evidence-backed insights that can be matured and transitioned into operational settings.
• Establish credible evaluation strategies and test pipelines that assess performance, robustness, reliability, and trustworthiness in mission-representative scenarios.
• Serve as the primary technical interface when appropriate; translate mission goals into measurable technical outcomes; communicate progress, decisions, and risks clearly to stakeholders.
• Proactively mentor junior staff and teammates, raising the bar for research rigor, engineering practice, and delivery habits across project teams.
• Maintain strong awareness of frontier developments aligned to the Frontier Lab, share insights with the lab, and help shape research directions and future work selection.
• Manage multiple priorities effectively, sustain steady execution cadence, and resolve blockers with minimal oversight.
• Build a strong research culture through internal talks, reading groups, and workshops; and engage with external AI/ML communities (professional societies, consortiums, working groups, and conferences) to strengthen collaboration pathways and keep the lab connected to emerging practice.
Qualifications:
Required:
• BS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Statistics, or related field with 10 years of relevant experience; OR MS with 8 years of relevant experience; OR PhD with 5 years of relevant experience.
• Deep expertise in one or more Frontier Lab-aligned areas (agentic systems, LLM reliability/evaluation, CV evaluation, robustness/assurance, TEVV pipelines, multimodal learning, edge ML).
• Strong engineering capability – can build and maintain high-quality prototypes, evaluation infrastructure, and repeatable experimentation workflows.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to represent technical work credibly to senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical workstreams and coordinate multi-person execution.
• Flexible to travel to SEI offices in Pittsburgh, PA and Washington, DC / Arlington, VA, sponsor sites, conferences, and offsite meetings (~10% travel).
• You must be able and willing to work onsite at an SEI office in Pittsburgh, PA or Arlington, VA 5 days per week.
• You will be subject to a background investigation and must be eligible to obtain and maintain a Department of War security clearance.
Preferred:
• Leading applied research projects resulting in effective prototypes, mission-relevant evaluation outcomes, or transitioned methods.
• Publications at strong venues (e.g., NeurIPS / ICLR / ICML, relevant workshops, MLCON), and/or demonstrable impact through applied research artifacts (benchmarks, evaluation suites, open-source, technical reports).
• Designing and operating TEVV efforts including evaluation pipelines, robustness analysis, calibration/uncertainty work, regression suites, and scenario-based evaluation protocols.
• Building agentic capabilities integrated with tools, data systems, and human workflows (decision support, planning, analytic contexts).
• Experience with secure or operational environments and delivery constraints typical of government settings.
• Experience shaping a technical roadmap or research portfolio aligned to sponsor priorities and lab strategy.
Company:
We conduct cutting-edge research and development that accelerates the transition of technology to the Department of War (DoW), delivering measurable impact in support of the national security mission. Founded in 1984, the company is headquartered in Pittsburgh, USA, with a team of 501-1000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.