Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning Lead Verification and Validation Engineer

• Serve as the technical lead for the IV&V and Data Curation Center of Excellence, setting priorities, defining standards, and driving the team's technical direction
• Mentor, guide, and coordinate a team of engineers performing data labeling, annotation, curation, and IV&V across multiple data modalities
• Establish and evolve annotation standards, labeling guidelines, data governance frameworks, and quality assurance processes to ensure consistency and reproducibility at scale
• Design and oversee data pipelines for ingestion, transformation, quality control, and cataloging of classified and open-source data
• Lead IV&V efforts on datasets and model outputs, defining acceptance criteria and fitness-for-use standards
• Serve as the primary point of contact between the data curation team and research scientists, algorithm developers, and program stakeholders to translate data needs into actionable plans
• Present findings, status, and recommendations to leadership and sponsors through well-constructed briefings, papers, and technical artifacts
• Evaluate and introduce tools, platforms, and best practices for annotation (e.g., CVAT, Label Studio), data versioning, and metadata management
• Drive automation of manual data analysis and curation processes to improve efficiency and scalability
• Architect and maintain data catalogs, metadata schemas, and access-controlled repositories that make curated datasets discoverable and accessible to the broader research team
• Work within an Agile development environment within a large research team

• 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)
• Success in environments where various forms of communication and organizational skills were crucial to be effective

• 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)
• Master's degree or higher in a relevant field
• 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

Your working location will be fully-on site located in either State College, PA or Reston, VA. Questions related to flexible work should be directed to the hiring manager during the interview process.

ARL’s purpose is to research and develop innovative solutions to challenging scientific, engineering, and technology problems in support of the Navy, the Intel Community (IC), and other federal government customers.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION on ARL, visit our website at www.arl.psu.edu.

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