Senior Data Engineer - Active Secret Clearance

Senior Data Engineer

Clearance: Active Secret Clearance

Location: Herndon, VA

What You'll Do:
Navitas is seeking an advanced Senior Data Engineer to design, build, and deploy scalable AI/ML models for use within the DoD's Search Portfolio. This role requires a strong background in natural language processing, generative AI (LLMs, RAG), distributed computing, and cloud-native architecture. The successful candidate will collaborate with interdisciplinary teams and apply the latest advancements in AI research to deliver secure, mission-ready solutions that process and analyze massive datasets.

Responsibilities will include but are not limited to:

• Design, develop, test, and support AI/ML pipelines and informatics solutions for varied DoD technical missions
• Collaborate with data scientists, software engineers, and stakeholders to integrate AI solutions across Search Portfolio products
• Optimize AI models for performance and cost-efficiency using distributed compute (Apache Spark/Databricks) and GPU-based Kubernetes clusters
• Stay informed on emerging AI research and integrate relevant advancements into production-ready models
• Manage full lifecycle of AI/ML components, from research to deployment, monitoring, and iterative improvement
• Diagnose and solve complex data-related challenges through analytical modeling and AI-driven approaches
• Document and present design alternatives, trade-offs, and implementation strategies to stakeholders
• Build and maintain shared libraries, tools, and reusable ML assets across engineering teams
• Assist in creating a strategic roadmap and architecture to enable rapid prototyping and experimentation with advanced AI capabilities
• Translate raw data into valuable insights using modern visualization, integration, and mining tools
• Maintain security, compliance, and reproducibility in all AI/ML model workflows and infrastructure

What You'll Need:

• 7+ years of hands-on experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs), semantic search, text embedding, RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), and generative AI applications
• Deep understanding of machine learning subfields including computer vision, statistical learning theory, reinforcement learning, and both supervised/unsupervised techniques
• Proven experience with data preprocessing, feature engineering, and model evaluation
• Strong coding and documentation practices in Python, R, Scala, Java, or C++
• Experience in ML engineer or data scientist roles developing and deploying real-world ML models
• Proficiency with version control systems (e.g., Git) for collaborative development
• Demonstrated use of Apache Spark or Databricks for high-volume distributed ML workloads
• Experience working with petabyte-scale datasets, performing data exploration, writing SQL, and using data visualization tools

Education:

• Bachelor s degree with 7-10 years of relevant experience, or Master s degree with 5+ years of experience