Senior Data Scientist - Principal

Job ID: 2503227-VIRGINIA_BEACH-VA

Location: VIRGINIA BEACH, VA, US

Date Posted: 2025-03-12

Category: Information Technology

Subcategory: Data Scientist

Schedule: Full-time

Shift: Day Job

Travel: Yes, 10 % of the Time

Minimum Clearance Required: None

Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain: Secret

Potential for Remote Work: No

Description

At SAIC, we are at the forefront of technological innovation in supporting the Navy's operational, strategic, and fleet readiness. We are committed to solving complex challenges and advancing the state of the art in Maritime Position, Navigation, and Timing (M-PNT) systems. Join us as we continue to define the future of the Navy's warfighter, delivering unparalleled solutions that make the world more connected, secure, and efficient.

Position Overview: We are currently seeking a highly skilled and motivated Data Scientist Senior Principal to join our talented team. This role requires advanced data analysis skills, including familiarity in machine learning model design and deployment, complex data manipulation, and effective communication of insights to guide strategic business decisions. You will often collaborate with cross-functional teams, overseeing data processes to ensure data integrity and leading complex data science projects with minimal supervision.

Work is performed on site in Norfolk, VA and Virginia Beach, VA.

This position is contingent upon award news Spring of 2026.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead complex data science projects from conception to deployment, including data collection, feature engineering, model development, evaluation, and monitoring.
• Conduct in-depth analysis of large datasets, identifying patterns and trends to inform business decisions.
• Familiarity with machine learning models to solve business problems.
• Ensure data integrity by implementing data cleaning and validation procedures.
• Collaborate with business teams to understand their needs, translate them into data science problems, and present actionable insights.
• Guide and mentor junior data scientists on technical skills and best practices.
• Work with cross-functional teams with data at all stages of the analysis lifecycle to derive actionable insight.
• Translates mission needs into an end-to-end analytical approach to achieve results.
• Perform the pre-analytics areas of data collection and understanding, data cleansing and integration, and data storage and retrieval.
• Familiarity with analytics and visualization software and programming languages, including analytics methods for big data.
• Determine the appropriate analytics based on the data and the desired outcomes, using techniques such as feature detection, statistics, data mining, predictive modeling, machine learning, natural language processing, and business intelligence.
• Interpret the validity of results and communicate the meaning of those results.
• Follow a scientific approach to generate value from data, verifying results at each step.

What You Can Expect:

• A culture of innovation, where your ideas and contributions are valued and make an impact.
• Hands-on experience with state-of-the-art technology and field-testing opportunities.
• A supportive environment that fosters professional growth and development.
• Competitive salary and benefits package.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Master's Degree and eleven (11) years of professional experience with data science.
• Strong understanding of statistical methods, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, time series analysis, etc.
• Familiarity with various machine learning models (e.g., decision trees, random forests, neural networks, etc.)
• Expertise in data cleaning, transformation, aggregation, and feature engineering using tools like SQL, Python, and Spark
• Strong proficiency in Python (including libraries like Pandas, NumPy, Scikit-learn)
• Experience with cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform for data storage and processing is desired.
• Experience with distributed computing frameworks for large-scale data analysis
• Ability to identify complex business problems, translate them into data science questions, and design solutions
• Ability to extract meaningful insights from complex data sets, identifying trends, patterns, and anomalies
• Ability to evaluate data quality, identify biases, and assess the validity of analytical results
• Ability to clearly communicate complex data insights to both technical and non-technical stakeholders through presentations and reports.
• Ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams to understand business needs and align data science projects with organizational goals.

Required Security Clearance:

• ship required.
• Must possess or be able to obtain a Department of Defense (DoD) Secret security clearance.
  • Active Interim Secret or final Secret clearance is preferred.

Required Certification, at least one relevant industry certification such as:

• CompTIA Cloud Essentials
• Microsoft Technical Associate (MTA)
• Certificate of Cloud Security (CCSK)
• CompTIA A+
• CompTIA Security+
• EMC Data Science Associate (EMCDSA)
• Cloudera Certified Data Scientist (CCDH)
• Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP)
• Certified Cloud Professional (CCP) (Cloudera)
• Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD)
• Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD)
• Microsoft Certified Solution Expert (MCSE)/Private Cloud

SAIC accepts applications on an ongoing basis and there is no deadline.

Covid Policy: SAIC does not require COVID-19 vaccinations or boosters. Customer site vaccination requirements must be followed when work is performed at a customer site.