Senior Data Scientist IV – Gen AI Development & Evaluation

Overview

PNNL's core capabilities are organized into major directorates, each with its own leadership and budget. Our Science & Technology directorates include National Security, Earth and Biological Sciences, Physical and Computational Sciences, and Energy and Environment. We also house the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility on the PNNL campus. The National Security Directorate (NSD) drives science-based, mission-focused solutions to address complex, real-world threats.

The AI and Data Analytics Division, part of NSD, integrates domain expertise with advanced hardware and software to deliver computational solutions for complex data and analytics challenges. We operate across the data analytics lifecycle, from data acquisition and management to analysis and decision support.

The AI & Data Analytics division is seeking to hire a Senior Data Scientist. This role blends foundational research with real-world implementation to address complex and consequential challenges at the intersection of artificial intelligence and national security. We contribute to mission-focused applied R&D projects that tackle national challenges. Successful candidates will have opportunities for professional growth on diverse, mission-focused projects.

As a Senior Data Scientist, you will serve as a senior technical leader, guiding mission-driven research, driving proposal development, and engaging directly with stakeholders. This role requires hands-on experience with, or leadership of, research that goes beyond inference endpoints—such as engagement with model architectures, training pipelines, and weight-level optimization—or the development and deployment of agentic AI solutions that leverage tool use, retrieval-augmented generation, multi-step reasoning, and autonomous decision-making workflows.

• Based in Richland, WA or Seattle, WA with onsite presence required
• Clearance required (see below for details)
• Travel may be required for stakeholder engagement or project events

• Lead innovative projects and programs developing and applying generative AI and foundation model development (pretraining, fine-tuning, agentic systems, and innovative training strategies) and evaluation (T&E, robustness) for key modalities such as:
  • Transform hyperspectral imaging (HSI) and geospatial applications by harnessing advanced AI techniques to extract actionable intelligence from complex, multi-layered data.
  • Drive breakthroughs in multi-int fusion—integrating diverse intelligence sources to deliver robust, mission-ready solutions that elevate operational capabilities and decision-making.
  • Advance knowledge discovery, support decision intelligence, and enable robust analytical processes. This includes leveraging advanced AI techniques to extract, synthesize, and integrate insights from unstructured, semi-structured, or large-scale text and documents.
• Engage with stakeholders to understand project requirements and translate them into actionable technical approaches aligned with sponsor goals.
• Direct the design, development, and iteration on foundation model, frontier AI research, and agentic AI systems that address complex, real-world problems—especially those involving diverse data modalities such as remote sensing imagery, sensor fusion, and text.
• Apply deep expertise in model internals (e.g., tokenization, attention mechanisms, weight adaptation, and loss optimization) to customize and improve model performance for domain-specific applications.
• Lead evaluation and verification of AI and agentic systems across multiple axes, including standard performance metrics, uncertainty quantification, generalization to out-of-distribution settings, and mission-specific assurance criteria.
• Lead proposal development and business development through proposals and/or briefing sponsors.
• Serve as a technical resource and mentor to junior to senior staff within the team, fostering a collaborative research environment and mission awareness.
• Maintain awareness of emerging trends in AI, AI security, and national security to shape future…