Senior Principal Data Scientist

Description

Your greatest work is ahead!

Leidos’
Defense Systems – Sensor Systems Analysis & Engineering (SSA&E) Portfolio is seeking an experienced Data Scientist to serve as a machine learning (ML) SME within our Sensor Systems Analysis and Engineering Department.

You will join a diverse team of engineers, scientists, and software developers to create unique solutions for complex problems. Our team tackles critical challenges that support the current and future defense of our nation, including the rapidly growing domains of machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI).

You will work within an established, highly skilled team alongside other contractors and our customers. Joining us means the opportunity to collaborate with leading experts while growing your career in areas that excite you. You will quickly become an integral member of the team and will be entrusted with significant and meaningful responsibilities. Because of this, we seek driven, engaged professionals who demonstrate exceptional character—our work often involves sensitive and unique challenges that require a high degree of trust from our customers.

If this sounds like an environment where you can thrive, keep reading!

Leidos Defense Systems Sector provides a broad portfolio of systems, solutions, and services across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace domains for customers worldwide. Our portfolio includes enterprise and mission IT, large-scale intelligence systems, command and control, geospatial and data analytics, cybersecurity, logistics, training, and intelligence analysis and operations support. We tackle the world’s toughest security challenges in support of “can’t fail” missions.

To explore and learn more, !

Are you ready to make an impact? Share your resume with us today!

• Serve as a recognized SME in applied statistics and ML/AI, with extensive experience collaborating with researchers across government laboratories and academia.
• Work closely with engineers and scientists to solve problems across ML, data science, statistics, computer vision, and image/signal processing to support weapon automatic target recognition (ATR) development. This requires ATR expertise in multiple sensor modalities, including passive EO/IR, SAR, and LIDAR/LADAR.
• Lead and conduct research in ATR development, signal information estimation, ML model forensics and interpretability, out-of-distribution detection, and adversarial attack detection/mitigation.

• Bachelor’s degree in mathematics, statistics, data science, computer science, or a related engineering/science field with 25 years of relevant experience OR Masters degree in mathematics, statistics, data science, computer science, or a related engineering/science field with 15-20 years of relevant experience OR Doctorate with 13-16 years of relevant experience
• Experience leading teams of scientists and engineers in the development of novel ML solutions.
• In-depth knowledge of classical ML techniques as well as modern deep learning (DL) architectures for supervised and unsupervised learning.
• Strong background in applied statistics and statistical testing, including non‑parametric approaches and high‑dimensional data analysis.
• Experience developing advanced statistical methods for evaluating neural networks or other ML frameworks.
• Experience conducting forensic analyses of DL models and ATR systems to identify weaknesses or issues.
• Experience developing ATR solutions—including object detection, pose estimation, tracking, and recognition—for EO/IR/RF/LiDAR sensing domains.
• Familiarity with hyperdimensional computing concepts and ML applications.
• US citizen, possess and maintain an active DoD security clearance (
  SECRET or higher
  ) required.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

December 3, 2025

$ - $

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a…