Research Scientist Jobs in Pittsburgh.
All active Research Scientist roles based in Pittsburgh.
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Lead Data Scientist - Simulation / Optimization
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Company Description
Job Description
The Lead Data Scientist will provide visionary technical leadership to a team of data scientists and AI engineers, driving the end-to-end development and deployment of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence solutions for our National Security clientele. This pivotal AI leadership role is instrumental in establishing a robust culture of decision-making Agentic AI and creating the AI platforms, the "brain" of The Ark, designed to be leveraged by a broad community of AI and Data Science professionals within Govini.
As a hands-on technical leader, you will apply deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence and a keen understanding of complex Defense Acquisition challenges. Your primary focus will be to work with our proprietary and commercial datasets to find critical connections, derive actionable knowledge, and identify potential issues that help our government clients make more informed decisions. This involves designing, developing, and rapidly deploying scalable AI solutions that transform these insights into mission-critical capabilities. You will also have the opportunity to expand and grow data-driven research across Govini, leading new areas to apply advanced analytics to drive strategic business and national security results. You'll apply your deep knowledge in advanced simulation and optimization techniques, including Discrete Event Simulation, Monte Carlo methods, and stochastic optimization, to enhance our platforms to handle complex capability simulation and optimization techniques for critical defense use cases.
To excel in this position, you must be an AI expert with a strong command of data science fundamentals and a proven ability to bring data-driven solutions to life within the defense ecosystem. The ideal candidate is a highly organized problem-solver who possesses excellent oral and written communication skills, capable of translating complex AI concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences. You must be independent, driven, and motivated to jump in and roll up your sleeves to get the job done. You lead by influence and motivation, demonstrating a passion for great work and an intolerance for mediocrity. We seek an uber-smart, creative, out-of-the-box thinker who is challenged by complex defense problems and obsessed with quality and rapid prototyping/deployment, knowing how to engage in constructive dialogue to find the best path forward.
This role is a full-time position located out of our office in Pittsburgh, PA.This role may require up to 10% travel
Scope of Responsibilities
- Drive the development of a complex, multi-modal decision intelligence system, serving as the central nervous architecture for integrating advanced simulation, optimization, and predictive modeling capabilities across The Ark's platforms.
- Define the multi-year technical roadmap for AI initiatives, turning vague business challenges into concrete, scalable research and product goals.
- Raise the collective bar by mentoring Senior-level engineers and building high-performing teams that consistently deliver state-of-the-art (SOTA) results.
- Drive consensus across disparate groups such as DS and AI, Product, Forward Deployed AI and Engineering, to ensure AI deployments are technically sound, commercially viable, and responsible.
- Act as the authority on scientific breakthroughs and model strategy, ensuring that core architectures, training methodologies, and data ecosystems are robust, cost-effective, and future-proofed against the rapidly evolving AI landscape
- Lead the end-to-end execution of large-scale AI projects, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and timely delivery.
- Apply deep knowledge in advanced simulation and optimization techniques, including Discrete Event Simulation, Monte Carlo methods, and stochastic optimization.
- Enhance our platforms to handle complex capability simulation and optimization techniques for critical defense use cases.
- Act as the primary Individual Contributor (IC) and technical lead for complex AI/ML/DS projects, taking deep ownership from ideation to production deployment.
- Serve as the domain expert in a specific area of AI (e.g., Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Decision Science), driving the application and development of state-of-the-art methods within that specialization.
- Work closely with partner teams, including AI research, data engineering, and software development, to define robust software architecture, set the project roadmap, and manage technical execution.
- Collaborate with the Product team to clearly define product scope, translating high-level requirements into actionable technical plans and delivering market-ready AI solutions integrated with client data platforms and workflows.
- Drive the development of scalable, AI-based platforms designed to support and power solutions for a diverse range of customers within the defense ecosystem.
- Champion the introduction of new AI innovations. Stay current with the rapidly evolving fields of Artificial Intelligence, including advanced methods in simulation and optimization, Large Language Models (LLMs), and agentic systems, and actively transfer this knowledge and best practices for implementation across the team.
- Mentor and guide junior and senior team members, fostering a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, and high-impact work.
- Nurture a robust AI culture within the team by leading technical discussions, conducting internal workshops, and promoting best practices in model development, experimentation, and MLOps.
- Demonstrate strong leadership qualities to align the team's AI strategy effectively with overall business and client needs, translating complex technical concepts into strategic business impacts for leadership.
Qualifications
- U.S. Citizenship is required
- Minimum of 7 years of professional experience working as a Data Scientist in an industry setting
- Oversee the full lifecycle of large-scale AI projects.
- Possess deep knowledge and the ability to apply techniques such as Discrete Event Simulation (DES), agent based modeling and Monte Carlo methods to model complex capabilities.
- Deep understanding and application of advanced optimization techniques, specifically including stochastic optimization.
- Deep understanding and practical experience with Bayesian optimization, causal discovery, and causal modeling.
- Ability to leverage simulation and optimization knowledge to enhance platforms for complex capability simulation and optimization in critical defense use cases.
- Understanding of coding AI (such as Claude Code) and experience in using it to scale up AI team deliveries
- Expertise in leveraging deep technical knowledge of AI solution internals (such as Deep Research systems) to design and implement custom, highly optimized solutions.
- Ensure timely project delivery and strategic goal alignment.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams (AI Research, Data Engineering, Software Development).
- Define robust software architecture for large-scale AI systems and project roadmaps.
- Translate high-level product requirements into actionable technical plans.
- Deliver production-ready AI solutions integrated with clients' data platforms and workflows.
- Drive the implementation of scalable AI/ML platforms.
- Maintain deep expertise in cutting-edge AI, including LLMs and agentic systems. Train models, build systems based on AI innovations
- Champion innovation and best practices across the organization.
- Mentor and coach team members.
- Foster a high-performing culture of technical excellence and continuous growth.
- Help to the leadership to align AI strategy effectively with client needs.
- Create agentic AI systems, using AI orchestrators and particular AI reasoning capabilities as tools.
Desired Skills:
- A strong publication record in the top conferences in one of the AI, ML NLP, and decision science areas
- Deep knowledge of LLM and Agentic system evaluation, experience in building evaluation systems
- Experience in LLM post-training or fine-tuning
- Demonstrate strong National Security domain knowledge.
- Experience with MLOps practices, including deployment, monitoring, and management of large-scale models in cloud environments (e.g., GCP, AWS, Azure).
- Track record of successfully transitioning AI research prototypes into robust, production-grade enterprise solutions
Ready to apply?
Apply to Govini
Forward Deployed Senior Data Scientist
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Company Description
Job Description
We are seeking an inquisitive Data Scientist to join our team, leveraging deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence and a keen understanding of complex Defense Acquisition challenges. Your primary focus will be to work with our proprietary and commercial datasets to find critical connections, derive actionable knowledge, and identify potential issues that help our government clients make more informed decisions. Your role will involve designing, developing, and rapidly deploying scalable AI solutions that transform these insights into mission-critical capabilities. You will have the opportunity to expand and grow data-driven research across Govini, leading new areas to apply advanced analytics to drive strategic business and national security results. As part of our team, you must be an AI expert with a strong command of data science fundamentals and a proven ability to bring data-driven solutions to life within the defense ecosystem.
In order to do this job well, you must be a highly organized problem-solver and possess excellent oral and written communication skills, capable of translating complex AI concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences. You are independent, driven, and motivated to jump in and roll up your sleeves to get the job done. You lead by influence and motivation. You have a passion for great work and nothing less than your best will do. You share our intolerance of mediocrity. You’re uber-smart, challenged by figuring things out and producing simple, impactful AI solutions to complex defense problems. Knowing there are always multiple answers to a problem, you know how to engage in a constructive dialogue to find the best path forward. You’re scrappy. We like scrappy. We need a creative, out-of-the-box thinker who shares our passion and obsession with quality and rapid prototyping/deployment.
Scope of Responsibilities
- Develop AI/ML/DS systems to address defense problems.
- Develop new AI-based stack of technologies for particular customer needs.
- Development of evaluation solutions for AI deployments.
- Lead the end-to-end execution of AI projects, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and timely delivery.
- Work closely with partner teams, including AI research, data engineering, and software development, to deliver robust AI systems.
- Collaborate with the AI leadership to clearly define product and applications scope, translating high-level requirements into actionable technical plans and delivering AI platforms and solutions.
- Drive the development of scalable, AI-based platforms designed to support and power solutions for a diverse range of customers within the defense ecosystem.
- Champion the introduction of new AI innovations. Stay current with the rapidly evolving fields of Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models (LLMs), and agentic systems, and actively transfer this knowledge and best practices for implementation across the team.
- Mentor and guide other team members, fostering a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, and high-impact work.
- Create agentic AI systems, using AI orchestrators and particular AI reasoning capabilities as tools.
Qualifications
- U.S. Citizenship is required
- Oversee the full lifecycle of AI projects within Govini AI ecosystem.
- Understanding of coding AI (such as Claude Code) and experience how to use it to scale up AI team deliveries
- Ensure timely project delivery and strategic goal alignment.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams (AI Research, Data Engineering, Software Development).
- Define robust software architecture for AI systems and project roadmaps.
- Translate high-level AI system requirements into actionable technical plans.
- Deliver production-ready AI solutions integrated with clients data platforms and workflows.
- Drive the implementation of scalable AI/ML platforms.
- Maintain deep expertise in cutting-edge AI, including LLMs and agentic systems. Train models, build systems based on AI innovations
- Champion innovation and best practices across the organization.
- Mentor and coach team members.
- Foster a high-performing culture of technical excellence and continuous growth.
- Demonstrate strong National Security domain knowledge.
Desired Skills:
- A strong publication record in the top conferences in one of the AI, ML NLP, decision science areas
- Deep knowledge of LLM and Agentic system evaluation, experience in building evaluation systems
- Experience in LLM posttraining or fine tuning
- Experience with MLOps practices, including deployment, monitoring, and management of large-scale models in cloud environments (e.g., GCP, AWS, Azure).
- Track record of successfully transitioning AI research prototypes into robust, production-grade enterprise solutions
Ready to apply?
Apply to Govini
Lead Data Scientist - Knowledge Retrieval
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Company Description
Job Description
The Lead Data Scientist will provide visionary technical leadership to a team of data scientists and AI engineers, driving the end-to-end development and deployment of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence solutions for our National Security clientele. This crucial position is key to building a strong culture of advanced agentic search, deep research, retrieval, and AI, and to creating scalable AI platforms for the wider AI and Data Science community.
As a hands-on technical leader, you will apply deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence and a keen understanding of complex Defense Acquisition challenges. Your primary focus will be to work with our proprietary and commercial datasets to find critical connections, derive actionable knowledge, and identify potential issues that help our government clients make more informed decisions. This involves designing, developing, and rapidly deploying scalable AI solutions that transform these insights into mission-critical capabilities. You will also have the opportunity to expand and grow data-driven research across Govini, leading new areas to apply advanced analytics to drive strategic business and national security results. You will build and lead the development of advanced agentic search, knowledge retrieval, and deep research systems. These systems are designed to provide deep conversational knowledge explorations, robust problem solving, accurate question answering, and a suite of other search, recommendation, and discovery capabilities, transforming proprietary and commercial datasets into mission-critical insights.
To excel in this position, you must be an AI expert with a strong command of data science fundamentals and a proven ability to bring data-driven solutions to life within the defense ecosystem. The ideal candidate is a highly organized problem-solver who possesses excellent oral and written communication skills, capable of translating complex AI concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences. You must be independent, driven, and motivated to jump in and roll up your sleeves to get the job done. You lead by influence and motivation, demonstrating a passion for great work and an intolerance for mediocrity. We seek an uber-smart, creative, out-of-the-box thinker who is challenged by complex defense problems and obsessed with quality and rapid prototyping/deployment, knowing how to engage in constructive dialogue to find the best path forward
This role is a full-time position located out of our office in Pittsburgh, PA.This role may require up to 10% travel
Scope of Responsibilities
- Drive the architecture and development of the 'Ark Brain,' a complex, multi-modal intelligent agent system for knowledge retrieval and deep research, serving as the central nervous architecture for powering agentic AI search, deep research, RAG, and knowledge graph systems across The Ark's platforms.
- Define the multi-year technical roadmap for AI initiatives, turning vague business challenges into concrete, scalable research and product goals.
- Raise the collective bar by mentoring Senior-level engineers and building high-performing teams that consistently deliver state-of-the-art (SOTA) results.
- Drive consensus across disparate groups such as DS and AI, Product, Forward Deployed AI and Engineering, to ensure AI deployments are technically sound, commercially viable, and responsible.
- Act as the authority on scientific breakthroughs and model strategy, ensuring that core architectures, training methodologies, and data ecosystems are robust, cost-effective, and future-proofed against the rapidly evolving AI landscape
- Lead the end-to-end execution of large-scale AI projects, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and timely delivery.
- Lead the development of advanced agentic search, knowledge retrieval, and deep research systems.
- Drive the expansion of data-driven research and advanced analytics for strategic business and national security results.
- Design and deploy Agentic AI systems capable of deep conversational knowledge explorations, robust problem solving, and accurate question answering from proprietary datasets.
- Act as the primary Individual Contributor (IC) and technical lead for complex AI/ML/DS projects, taking deep ownership from ideation to production deployment.
- Serve as the domain expert in AI Search Science (ranking, query understanding, agentic search, deep research, embedding models, etc), driving the application and development of state-of-the-art methods within that specialization.
- Work closely with partner teams, including AI research, data engineering, and software development, to define robust software architecture, set the project roadmap, and manage technical execution.
- Collaborate with the Product team to clearly define product scope, translating high-level requirements into actionable technical plans and delivering market-ready AI solutions integrated with client data platforms and workflows.
- Drive the development of scalable, AI-based platforms designed to support and power solutions for a diverse range of customers within the defense ecosystem.
- Champion the introduction of new AI innovations. Stay current with the rapidly evolving fields of Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models (LLMs), and agentic systems, and actively transfer this knowledge and best practices for implementation across the team.
- Mentor and guide junior and senior team members, fostering a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, and high-impact work.
- Nurture a robust AI culture within the team by leading technical discussions, conducting internal workshops, and promoting best practices in model development, experimentation, and MLOps.
- Demonstrate strong leadership qualities to align the team's AI strategy effectively with overall business and client needs, translating complex technical concepts into strategic business impacts for leadership.
Qualifications
- U.S. Citizenship is required
- Minimum of 7 years of professional experience working as a Data Scientist in an industry setting
- Oversee the full lifecycle of large-scale AI projects.
- Understanding of coding AI (such as Claude Code) and experience in using it to scale up AI team deliveries
- Expertise in designing and implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures and complex indexing strategies for proprietary, large-scale, heterogeneous datasets. Expertise in fine-tuning multi modal embedding models
- Proven ability to leverage state-of-the-art LLMs, multi-modal embedding models, vector databases, and knowledge graph systems to build production-ready knowledge retrieval, conversational AI search, and Deep Research systems.
- Practical experience building hybrid knowledge retrieval systems that combine advanced techniques like embedding models, knowledge graphs, and traditional methods (e.g., BM25), utilizing novel paradigms such as GraphRAG, RAG-RL, and other advanced retrieval strategies.
- Deep knowledge of and practical experience with ranking and reranking models, including multi-tower, bi-encoder and cross-encoder architectures, specifically within the context of search and knowledge retrieval systems.
- Expert proficiency in developing and deploying multi-agent AI systems and reasoning frameworks (e.g., ReAct, Chain-of-Thought) for complex knowledge exploration, robust problem-solving, and decision support within search and retrieval contexts.
- Ensure timely project delivery and strategic goal alignment.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams (AI Research, Data Engineering, Software Development).
- Define robust software architecture for large-scale AI systems and project roadmaps.
- Translate high-level product requirements into actionable technical plans.
- Deliver production-ready AI solutions integrated with clients' data platforms and workflows.
- Drive the implementation of scalable AI/ML platforms.
- Maintain deep expertise in cutting-edge AI, including LLMs and agentic systems. Train models, build systems based on AI innovations
- Champion innovation and best practices across the organization.
- Mentor and coach team members.
- Foster a high-performing culture of technical excellence and continuous growth.
- Help to the leadership to align AI strategy effectively with client needs.
- Create agentic AI systems, using AI orchestrators and particular AI reasoning capabilities as tools.
Desired Skills:
- A strong publication record in the top conferences in one of the AI, ML NLP, and decision science areas
- Deep knowledge of LLM and Agentic system evaluation, experience in building evaluation systems
- Experience in LLM post-training or fine-tuning.
- Demonstrate strong National Security domain knowledge.
- Experience with MLOps practices, including deployment, monitoring, and management of large-scale models in cloud environments (e.g., GCP, AWS, Azure).
- Track record of successfully transitioning AI research prototypes into robust, production-grade enterprise solutions
Ready to apply?
Apply to Govini
Forward Deployed Data Scientist
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Company Description
Job Description
We are seeking an inquisitive Data Scientist to join our team, leveraging deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence and a keen understanding of complex Defense Acquisition challenges. Your primary focus will be to work with our proprietary and commercial datasets to find critical connections, derive actionable knowledge, and identify potential issues that help our government clients make more informed decisions. Your role will involve designing, developing, and rapidly deploying scalable AI solutions that transform these insights into mission-critical capabilities. You will have the opportunity to expand and grow data-driven research across Govini, leading new areas to apply advanced analytics to drive strategic business and national security results. As part of our team, you must be an AI expert with a strong command of data science fundamentals and a proven ability to bring data-driven solutions to life within the defense ecosystem.
In order to do this job well, you must be a highly organized problem-solver and possess excellent oral and written communication skills, capable of translating complex AI concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences. You are independent, driven, and motivated to jump in and roll up your sleeves to get the job done. You lead by influence and motivation. You have a passion for great work and nothing less than your best will do. You share our intolerance of mediocrity. You’re uber-smart, challenged by figuring things out and producing simple, impactful AI solutions to complex defense problems. Knowing there are always multiple answers to a problem, you know how to engage in a constructive dialogue to find the best path forward. You’re scrappy. We like scrappy. We need a creative, out-of-the-box thinker who shares our passion and obsession with quality and rapid prototyping/deployment.
Scope of Responsibilities
- Developing new AI methods and using existing ones to solve complex defense problems
- Developing working AI systems and deploying them
- Rapid prototyping of AI models, systems, heuristics, and agentic solutions
- Working directly with customers to understand and solve their problems
- Translating customer problem definitions into technical requirements for AI-based systems
- Translating vague customer needs into concrete AI workflows and Data Science solutions
- Evaluating solution effectiveness with customers, tuning, and redefining solutions when needed
- Deploying code into production AI systems
- Taking end-to-end ownership of client problems
- Communicating clearly with both non-technical and technical users
- Working with AI platform, agentic AI, and data engineering teams to build end-to-end solutions in production deployments
- Collaborating with AI platform and agentic AI teams to generalize capabilities into reusable agentic AI features/skills for other deployments
- Wrapping AI/DS solutions into AI agentic/skills frameworks
- Create agentic AI systems, using AI orchestrators and particular AI reasoning capabilities as tools.
Qualifications
- U.S. Citizenship is required
- Ability to translate customer problems into technical AI requirements, and write down the documentation to be used by multiple teams.
- Deep ability to embed with clients, understand vague business or national security challenges, and translate these customer problems into concrete, actionable technical requirements and detailed documentation for AI-based systems.
- Expertise in rapidly prototyping models, heuristics, and agentic solutions. The ability to translate vague needs into concrete AI workflows and Data Science solutions, followed by deploying production-grade code and taking end-to-end ownership of the client's problem.
- Skill in defining concrete AI workflows from vague requirements.
- Experience evaluating and tuning AI solutions for effectiveness. Experience in measuring the impact of AI/DS solutions.
- Competency in deploying code into production AI systems. Competency in building agent/skills solving particular problems.
- Expertise in integrating AI/DS solutions into agentic frameworks.
- End-to-end ownership of client problems.
- Strong communication with non-technical users and technical users.
- Collaboration with cross-functional teams for production deployment.
- Strong collaboration and communication skills to work effectively with AI platform and data engineering teams. This includes generalizing unique AI/DS solutions into reusable agentic features/skills and integrating them into agentic frameworks for other production deployments.
Desired Skills:
- A strong publication record in the top conferences in one of the AI, ML, NLP, or decision science areas
- Deep knowledge of LLM and Agentic system evaluation, experience in building evaluation systems
- Extensive expertise in specialized domains such as Operations Research, Optimization, and Decision Science.
- Track record of successfully transitioning AI research prototypes into robust, production-grade enterprise solutions
Ready to apply?
Apply to Govini
Company Description
Job Description
Scope of Responsibilities
- Design experiments, test hypotheses, and build models for advanced data analysis and complex algorithms
- Apply advanced statistical and predictive modeling techniques to build, maintain, and improve multiple real-time decision systems
- Make strategic recommendations on data collection, integration, and retention requirements, incorporating business requirements and knowledge of data industry best practices
- Model and frame business scenarios that are meaningful and which impact critical processes and decisions; transform, standardize, and integrate datasets for client use cases
- Convert custom, complex and manual client data analysis tasks into repeatable, configurable processes for consistent and scalable use within the Govini SaaS platform
- Optimize processes for maximum speed, performance, and accuracy; craft clean, testable, and maintainable code
- Partner with internal Govini business analysts and external client teams to seek out the best solutions regarding data-driven problem-solving
- Participate in end-to-end software development, on an agile team in a scrum process, collaborating closely with fellow software, machine learning, data, and QA engineers
Qualifications
- U.S. Citizenship is required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field; Master’s or PhD preferred
- Minimum 3 years of hands-on data science experience
- Minimum 3 years of experience deriving key insights and KPIs for external and internal customers
- Regular development experience in Python
- Prior hands-on experience working with data-driven analytics
- Proven ability to develop solutions to loosely defined business problems by leveraging pattern detection over large datasets
- Proficiency in statistical analysis, quantitative analytics, forecasting/predictive analytics, multivariate testing, and optimization algorithms
- Experience using machine learning algorithms (e.g., gradient-boosted machines, neural networks)
- Ability to work independently with little supervision
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills
- A burning desire to work in a challenging fast-paced environment
- Current possession of a U.S. security clearance, or the ability to obtain one with our sponsorship
- Experience in or exposure to the nuances of a startup or other entrepreneurial environment
- Experience working on agile/scrum teams
- Experience building datasets from common database tools using flavors of SQL
- Expertise with automation and streaming data
- Experience with major NLP frameworks (spaCy, fasttext, BERT)Familiarity with big data frameworks (e.g., HDFS, Spark) and AWS
- Familiarity with Git source control management
- Experience working in a product organization
- Experience analyzing financial, supply chain/logistics, or intellectual property data
Ready to apply?
Apply to Govini
Staff Safety Data Scientist, Safety Analysis
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Who we are
Aurora’s mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.
The Aurora Driver will create a new era in mobility and logistics, one that will bring a safer, more efficient, and more accessible future to everyone.
At Aurora, you will tackle massively complex problems alongside other passionate, intelligent individuals, growing as an expert while expanding your knowledge. For the latest news from Aurora, visit aurora.tech or follow us on LinkedIn.
We are searching for a Staff Safety Data Scientist on the Safety Analysis team who is a technical leader and go-to expert for risk and safety guidance, leveraging deep expertise in data science to lead critical safety research. Your insights will drive the safety strategy and external safety communications, including the development of industry-leading, benchmark safety studies and frameworks. The role requires a strong background in risk and hazard assessment and exceptional communication and interpersonal skills. You will be responsible for applying advanced statistical analysis and probabilistic modeling to support the safety case, inform hardware and software decisions, and identify critical risk factors. You will collaborate with diverse stakeholders across engineering, operations, and product.
In This Role, You Will:
- Lead the development of novel quantitative data analytics using both proprietary (Aurora-logged, sensor, system, integration testing data) and publicly available data (CRSS, FARS, state-level information).
- Author and present technical analyses and findings to diverse internal and external audiences, including stakeholders, authoritative bodies, and industry forums.
- Design and automate data collection and analysis to support ongoing safety programs.
- Extract insights from historical system safety performance to develop leading indicators for future performance forecasting. Analyze safety data from operational vehicles, crash metrics, and near-miss incidents to inform safety strategies and decision-making.
- Develop statistical models and algorithms to predict potential risks and prevent incidents, improving the safety performance of autonomous systems.
- Model self-driving vehicle behaviors at the system and subsystem levels.
- Develop and maintain reports and expressions of baseline risk coverage and application in operations.
- Design and develop expressions of risk benchmarking from similar industries.
- Create dashboards and reports for communicating risk, ranking, and anomalies.
- Present safety research findings to senior leadership and recommend actionable improvements to safety protocols and operational systems.
- Mentor and lead junior team members, fostering their professional growth.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent applicable technical experience.
- 7+ years of progressive experience solving large-scale complex problems.
- Demonstrated experience in a safety related domain (e.g., transportation, aerospace, robotics, medical devices).
- Strong understanding of safety principles and risk assessment methodologies; with a proven track record of using data science techniques to solve safety challenges and mitigate risks in a dynamic environment.
- Deep command of statistical methods, probabilistic modeling, and performing rapid exploratory data analysis.
- Expertise in data science tools (e.g., Python, SQL, R), statistical modeling, machine learning, predictive analytics, and visualization software (e.g., Tableau, Power BI).
- Adept at querying, analyzing, and visualizing large datasets.
- Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to convey complex information to various audiences.
- Strong leadership skills, with the ability to provide guidance and mentorship.
- Ability to work independently, as part of a cross-functional team, or as a project lead.
Desirable Qualifications
- Advanced degree in Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent applicable technical experience.
- Experience working in safety and risk, ideally complemented by a portfolio of publications, reports, or conference presentations.
- Familiarity with rapidly scaling operational environments.
- Proficient in working with advanced data transformation tools such as DBT.
- Skilled in building and deploying using Amazon Web Services (AWS) tools.
- Background in the Autonomous Vehicles, Aerospace, or Robotics domains.
The base salary range for this position is $171,000 - $247,000 per year. Aurora’s pay ranges are determined by role, level, and location. Within the range, the successful candidate’s starting base pay will be determined based on factors including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, relevant education or training, and market conditions. These ranges may be modified in the future. The successful candidate will also be eligible for an annual bonus, equity compensation, and benefits.
Working at Aurora
At Aurora, we bring together extraordinarily talented and experienced people united by the strength of our values. We operate with integrity, set outrageous goals, and build a culture where we win together — all without any jerks.
We believe in-person work increases collaboration, empathy and our ability to lead effectively. As a result, we operate in a hybrid work environment where Aurorans are in office at least 3 days per week.
Our Careers page provides insight into what it is like to work at Aurora, and you can find all the latest updates in our Newsroom.
Our commitment to safety
At the core of everything we do is our commitment to safety. Building best-in-class self-driving technology will take time, and we believe that each employee at Aurora has a role in contributing to safety, every step of the way. Aurora expects commitment to our safety policies from every employee, and seeks candidates who take an active responsibility, can contribute to building an atmosphere of trust, and invest in the organization’s long-term success by prioritizing working safely, no matter what.
Our commitment to inclusion
Aurora considers candidates without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy status, parent or caregiver status, ancestry, political affiliation, veteran and/or military status, physical or mental disability, or any other status protected by federal or state law. Aurora considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law. We are also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at careersiteaccommodations@aurora.tech.
For California applicants, information collected and processed as part of your application and any job applications you choose to submit is subject to Aurora’s California Employment Privacy Policy.
Ready to apply?
Apply to Aurora Innovation
Principal Machine Learning Scientist
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About Us
Are you ready to build the future of the supply chain? At Gather AI, we’re not just creating software; we’re pioneering a new era of warehouse intelligence. We’ve developed a groundbreaking, vision-powered platform that uses autonomous drones and existing equipment to capture real-time data, completely digitizing workflows that have historically been manual and error-prone. This means facilities operate smarter, safer, and more efficiently, ultimately redefining “on-time, in full” delivery.
If you’re looking for an opportunity to contribute to truly transformative technology and make a significant impact in a vital industry, Gather AI is the place for you. We’re leading the charge in the rapidly evolving robotics industry, and we invite you to join us in reshaping the global supply chain, one intelligent warehouse at a time.
About the Team
This role work closely with a Senior Machine Learning Scientist and our Lead Machine Learning Infrastructure Engineer, alongside cross-functional partners in Cloud Engineering, Product, and Operations. The role spans both deep technical work and collaboration with teams closest to the customer. As a Principal-level IC, you'll have real input into technical direction — not just executing on decisions, but helping make them.
About the Role
We are looking for a Principal Machine Learning Scientist to advance the state of our computer vision systems for warehouse inventory scanning. You will work across the full ML lifecycle — from research and model architecture through training, deployment, and production monitoring — with a focus on delivering measurable improvements to detection, segmentation, and OCR accuracy across our drone and MHE Vision products.
This role is ideal for a senior ML practitioner who wants principal-level impact on a core product, a variety of deployment targets (cloud, on-prem, embedded), and real-world data with tangible business outcomes.
What You’ll Do
- Advance core computer vision model performance (object detection, segmentation, OCR) for warehouse inventory scanning across drone and MHE Vision platforms
- Own the full ML lifecycle from research and experiment design through production deployment and monitoring — applying rigorous ablation studies and SOTA methodology
- Collaborate with the ML infrastructure team on model optimization and deployment across cloud and edge inference targets (ONNX, TensorRT, quantization)
- Work with Operations and Product to understand customer needs and translate them into ML improvements with measurable business impact
- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to the ML team, raising standards for experiment design, model evaluation, and production readiness
- Explore next-generation perception capabilities, including embedded and on-prem inference optimization for new deployment targets
What You’ll Need
- 10+ years of experience in machine learning or computer vision
- Deep expertise in CNNs, object detection, image segmentation, and OCR using PyTorch (preferred) or TensorFlow
- Strong Python proficiency and software engineering fundamentals; hands-on experience with OpenCV and GPU computing
- Track record of delivering production ML systems at scale, including model training, evaluation, and deployment
- MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Robotics, or a related field
Nice to Have
- Experience with drone, robotics, or autonomous systems perception
- Publications in top vision or robotics conferences (CVPR, ICCV, ICRA, NeurIPS, CoRL)
- Experience designing and deploying models for real-time inference on constrained compute platforms
- Warehouse, logistics, or supply chain domain experience
Ready to apply?
Apply to Gather AICompany Overview
At Skild AI, we are building the world's first general purpose robotic intelligence that is robust and adapts to unseen scenarios without failing. We believe massive scale through data-driven machine learning is the key to unlocking these capabilities for the widespread deployment of robots within society. Our team consists of individuals with varying levels of experience and backgrounds, from new graduates to domain experts. Relevant industry experience is important, but ultimately less so than your demonstrated abilities and attitude. We are looking for passionate individuals who are eager to explore uncharted waters and contribute to our innovative projects.
Position Overview
We are looking for Research Scientists to lead the effort in developing the next generation of techniques to advance the capabilities of our robotic systems. We are looking for people with proven expertise in machine learning and/or robotics, who are passionate about pushing the boundaries of what is possible. You will collaborate with a team of talented researchers and engineers, and enhance our cohesive research strategy, driving ongoing innovation and technological advancements within the company. The ideal candidate will have a track record of discovering fundamental, scalable solutions, and a passion for seeing their research transform into impactful applications.
Responsibilities
- Develop new algorithms and methods for training general-purpose robot foundation models.
- Conduct cutting edge research across multiple disciplines (Perception, Robotics, RL / IL, Machine Learning, etc.).
- Work with large scale systems and large-scale model training.
Preferred Qualifications
- PhD degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Multiple years of experience in conducting research.
- Proficiency in Python and at least one deep learning library such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, etc.
- Publications at top-tier ML, robotics, or CV conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CoRL, RSS, ICRA, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV).
- Deep technical knowledge, and research experience in deep learning, reinforcement learning, robotics, or computer vision.
- Deep understanding of state-of-the-art machine learning techniques and models.
- Experience working with robot systems.
- Experience working with large-scale model training and systems.
Ready to apply?
Apply to Skild AI