Analytics & AI Strategic Reasoning SME

Analytics & AI Strategic Reasoning SME

Strategic Plans & Policy Support | Norfolk, VA | On-site

Company: Ironclad Defense Works

Location: Norfolk, Virginia

Work Status: Full-time, on-site

Clearance Required: Active NATO SECRET or National SECRET equivalent

Citizenship

Required:

Citizen of a NATO member nation

Application Email: jobs

Ironclad Defense Works is seeking an exceptional Analytics & AI Strategic Reasoning Subject Matter Expert to support Strategic Plans and Policy work at the intersection of geopolitics, artificial intelligence, strategic analysis, and defense transformation.

This is a high-impact role for a deeply analytical professional who can combine human judgment, data science, large language models, and structured reasoning to help address some of NATO’s most complex strategic questions - including Sino-Russian relationships, Russian and Chinese theories of victory, military strategy, doctrine, and emerging geopolitical-security dynamics.

The ideal candidate is not simply an AI user or a policy analyst. We are looking for someone who can bridge both worlds: a strategic thinker who understands political-military affairs, a data-minded analyst who can structure fragmented information into rigorous evidence, and an AI practitioner who can use modern tools responsibly, transparently, and creatively to improve the quality of strategic assessment.

The Analytics & AI Strategic Reasoning SME will serve as a specialist supporting Strategic Plans and Policy activities, strategy development, strategic initiatives, and special projects. The role will contribute to research, analysis, experimentation, and production of high-quality strategic outputs for senior defense stakeholders.

You will help design and execute data science and AI-enabled experiments; leverage large language models and open-source datasets; develop taxonomies and structured analytic approaches; and support strategic research on Russia, China, and broader geopolitical-security questions.

This position requires someone comfortable operating in a military strategic headquarters environment, engaging with complex and sensitive subject matter, and producing outputs that meet NATO-level expectations for rigor, clarity, and traceability.

You will support Strategic Plans and Policy stakeholders as a subject matter expert in data analytics, artificial intelligence, and strategic reasoning.

Key responsibilities include:

• Apply AI and data science to strategic research and analysis. Design and execute analytical experiments using data science, machine learning, and AI methods to support political-military research, strategy development, and special projects.
• Use large language models to process and analyze complex source material. Leverage multiple LLMs and AI-enabled research workflows to process large bodies of open-source text, language data, structured datasets, and analytical material, including Meta Llama, OpenAI GPT, Google Gemini, and other allied, challenger, or adversary-developed equivalents.
• Support analysis of Russia, China, and Sino-Russian strategic dynamics. Contribute to research on Sino-Russian relationships, Russian and Chinese military strategies, doctrine, theories of victory, strategic culture, and related geopolitical-security issues.
• Develop structured analytic frameworks and taxonomies. Transform raw information into structured data, build taxonomies for analytical rigor, and facilitate systematic analysis that improves transparency, repeatability, and evidentiary traceability.
• Create transparent, evidence-linked assessments. Apply AI in ways that preserve a clear, traceable link between evidence and assessment. The successful candidate must understand that AI-enabled analysis is only useful when the reasoning chain, source basis, and confidence of assessment can be explained.
• Explore and integrate diverse datasets and tools. Work with text- and number-based datasets, open-source data, event datasets, economic, demographic, military, political, and elite opinion data, and tools such as GDELT, ICEWS, Phoenix, TERRIER, or comparable sources.
• Develop proofs of concept for innovative analytic…