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RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: No relocation assistance available

CLEARANCE TYPE: Top Secret

TRAVEL: Yes, 10% of the Time

Description

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman Space Systems, Multi-Domain Operations, and Missile Defense Integration Business Unit (BU) has an exciting career opportunity for a Staff Software Engineer - Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) Specialist to support the design, guidance, and implementation of AI/ML-enabled capabilities for missile defense mission areas. The successful candidate will contribute across multiple phases of the mission lifecycle, supporting analytical, modeling, simulation, and decision-support activities related to detection, tracking, discrimination, fire control, and engagement functions within a complex system-of-systems environment. The position is in Huntsville, AL.

Position Overview:

The selected Staff Software Engineer - AI/ML Specialist will collaborate with systems engineers, domain experts, and software developers to identify appropriate problem formulations and opportunities for the application of AI/ML techniques. Responsibilities include developing and curating training and evaluation datasets from diverse sources, defining data management and labeling strategies, and designing scalable training, testing, and validation infrastructure consistent with program constraints and security requirements.

Essential Functions:

+ The selected candidate will be responsible for guiding the selection, development, and integration of AI/ML models into existing analytical, modeling, and simulation frameworks, ensuring alignment with system architectures, interfaces, and performance objectives. This includes supporting model evaluation, uncertainty characterization, robustness assessments, and lifecycle considerations such as retraining, configuration management, and traceability.

+ The AI/ML Specialist will also contribute to the establishment of best practices, standards, and governance for AI/ML usage, including documentation, verification and validation approaches, and coordination with broader digital engineering and systems engineering processes. Emphasis will be placed on explainability, testability, and integration within mission-relevant workflows, while maintaining compliance with applicable policies, security requirements, and program constraints.

+ The AI/ML Specialist will provide guidance and subject matter expertise to the Digital Ecosystem and Platforms team for the SE&I Team's AI adoption strategy. Key tasks include identification, evaluation, and integration of Large Language Model(s), as well as use case specific AI tooling such as SysML modeling and Integrated Development Environment (IDE) plug-ins.

+ Represent the Systems Engineering and Integration Team to Missile Defense Agency to internal and external stakeholders in reviews and technical interchanges related to AI/ML.

+ Collaborate with team Subject Matter Experts to ensure technical quality of engineering and analysis products.

+ Create and present briefings within the team and to Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and supporting stakeholders.

+ Duties will include leading small teams of engineers in the development of products.

+ The position is in Huntsville, AL and is located on a customer site at the Boeing Jetplex facility.

The selected candidate should thrive in a fast-paced work environment with high expectations, significantly diverse assignments, and collaborative/team settings across all levels.

Basic Qualifications:

+ Bachelor’s Degree in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics) discipline from an accredited university and 12 years of related experience, or a Master's Degree and 10 years of related experience, or 8 years of related experience with a PhD.

+ Demonstrated experience applying multiple Artificial Intelligence and/or Machine Learning techniques (e.g., artificial neural networks, Bayesian belief networks, decision trees) to complex technical or analytical problems.

+ Experience working with data-centric workflows, including data preparation, curation, labeling, and quality assessment for analytical or modeling purposes.

+ Familiarity with the full AI/ML lifecycle, including model development, training, testing, validation, and iterative improvement.

+ Experience collaborating with multidisciplinary teams, including systems engineering, software development, and domain subject matter experts.

+ Ability to translate high-level mission or system objectives into well-defined analytical or computational problem statements.

+ Experience documenting technical approaches, assumptions, and results in a clear and structured manner suitable for engineering and programmatic review.

+ Understanding of basic software engineering practices, including version control, modular design, and reproducibility.

+ Ability to work within established program constraints, including security, configuration management, and governance processes.

+ Applicant must demonstrate ability to think critically to develop and capture concepts in technical papers, presentations, and discussions.

+ Must possess good oral and written communication skills

+ Capable of working both independently and within a small team environment.

+ The successful candidate must also be willing to assume a technical leadership role at times.

+ Ability and willingness to work on a customer site.

+ Ability and willingness to travel up to 10% of the time.

+ Applicants must have a current active in-scope U.S. Government DoD issued Top Secret security clearance at the time of application which is required to start.

+ Applicants must be able to obtain SAP access within a reasonable time after beginning employment.

Preferred Qualifications:

+ Experience applying AI/ML techniques within complex, distributed, or system-of-systems environments.

+ Familiarity with modeling and simulation, digital engineering, or analytical frameworks used to support system design, assessment, or decision support.

+ Experience with scalable training, testing, or evaluation infrastructure, including compute resource management and automation.

+ Exposure to uncertainty quantification, robustness analysis, model verification and validation, or performance assessment methodologies.

+ Experience supporting data governance, model traceability, or lifecycle management in regulated or mission-critical environments.

+ Familiarity with explainable AI concepts or techniques and their application in engineering or decision-support contexts.

+ Experience working in government, defense, aerospace, or other highly regulated technical domains.

+ Ability to communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

+ Experience supporting transition of analytical or AI/ML capabilities from development environments into operationally relevant workflows.

+ Familiarity with hardware, programming languages, scientific computing environments, and resource management tools commonly used for data analysis and modeling to include graphical processing units (GPUs), Python / MATLAB / SQL, High Performance Computing (HPC) clusters and SLURM.

+ Demonstrated experience with missile defense applications or similar domains (air combat, air defense, intercept of ballistic targets, intercept of non-ballistic targets, space vehicles, sub-orbital mechanics, countermeasure mitigation and discrimination, etc.).

+ Knowledge of ballistic and advanced threat systems (e.g., aero-maneuvering, hypersonic, hyper-glide, countermeasures, etc.).

Primary Level Salary Range: $204,500.00 - $306,700.00

The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions.

Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.

The application period for the job is estimated to be 20 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates.

Northrop Grumman is an Equal Opportunity Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected class. For our complete EEO and pay transparency statement, please visit http://www.northropgrumman.com/EEO. U.S. Citizenship is required for all positions with a government clearance and certain other restricted positions.