Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning Lead Verification and Validation Engineer
$168,000–$318,840 year
On-siteReston, Virginia, United States
Job Summary
Lead the Independent Verification and Validation and Data Curation Center of Excellence, setting technical priorities, defining standards, and driving team direction for AI/ML model success. Mentor engineers performing data labeling, annotation, and curation across multiple modalities while establishing annotation guidelines, data governance frameworks, and quality assurance processes. Design and oversee data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, and cataloging of classified and open-source datasets, then lead IV&V efforts on model outputs to define acceptance criteria. Serve as the primary liaison between the data curation team, research scientists, and program stakeholders to translate data needs into actionable plans, presenting findings and recommendations to leadership. Evaluate and introduce tools for annotation, data versioning, and metadata management to automate manual processes and improve scalability. Work within an Agile environment to maintain data catalogs and access-controlled repositories that make curated datasets discoverable.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Information Science, Engineering, or a related technical field
- Extensive experience designing and managing data curation, annotation, or IV&V workflows for AI/ML systems
- Deep understanding of machine learning fundamentals, including how data quality, labeling strategies, and dataset composition impact model training, evaluation, and deployment
- Strong proficiency in Python and SQL for data manipulation, pipeline development, and analysis
- Experience with data annotation tools and platforms (e.g., CVAT, Label Studio, or equivalent)
- Bachelor's Degree - Engineering or Science
- 19+ years of relevant experience
- 14+ years of relevant experience
- Current eligibility to access classified information at the Top Secret/ SCI level or higher and may be subject to a government background investigation to updated clearance eligibility, if required
- You must be a U.S. citizen to apply
- Must be eligible to obtain a government security clearance
- Must participate in the ARL drug testing program
- Must comply with electronic and physical monitoring requirements applicable to federal contractors
- Must be able to lift 50 lbs
Desired Qualifications
- Master's degree or higher in a relevant field
- Prior experience leading or managing a technical team
- Experience working with DoD or Intelligence Community data, workflows, or operational environments
- Familiarity with geospatial data formats (shapefiles, GeoJSON, AIS), imagery/FMV exploitation, or signals data processing
- Experience with data versioning tools (e.g., DVC, LakeFS) or data catalog platforms
- Knowledge of IV&V methodologies and test and evaluation practices for data-driven systems
- Experience with containerized development environments (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure)
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