Senior Data Scientist - Top Secret at Sunayu
Alexandria, VA
$131,300–$237,350
Jul 16, 2026
Alexandria, VA
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior data scientist role focused on building and deploying AI/ML solutions for defense and intelligence applications. Day-to-day work spans statistical modeling, predictive analytics, entity resolution, graph analytics, and large language models, using tools such as Python, PyTorch, and geospatial platforms. The role suits a deeply experienced practitioner comfortable working across structured and unstructured data in a clearance-required, engineering-driven environment.
Senior level · 10+ years · National · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $122,874 (middle half $87,544–$162,374).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (10)
No work location or metro area is specified in the posting. Given the Defense/Intelligence community focus and the TS/SCI with Polygraph requirement, the role is likely in the Washington DC area or another major cleared-work hub, but this cannot be confirmed from the text.
The clearance gate is 'Active Top Secret clearance and eligibility for TS/SCI with Polygraph' — both an active TS and the ability to obtain TS/SCI with poly are hard requirements.
Experience requirement is stated as '12+ years' without a Master's degree or '10+ years' with one. The lower bound (10) is used for the overall years minimum, reflecting the minimum possible gate.
Degree requirement is marked None because the JD explicitly states 'Relevant experience may be substituted for a degree.'
PyTorch, Scikit-learn, LLMs, and geospatial analytics appear in the role description narrative alongside Python as the named tools the role works with; they are treated as required given the firm framing ('Work with… leverage modern tools such as…') in the context of a requirements-heavy posting. This is a judgment call — they could be read as stack context.
Git/SVN are listed together as version control alternatives; JIRA is listed alongside them but is a distinct tool and emitted separately.
Kubernetes and OpenShift are listed as deployment technology alternatives; Docker is a distinct tool emitted separately.
The 'Preferred Qualifications' section covers Neo4j/graph ML, SQL, Elastic Stack, Streamlit, Hadoop/Ray/Spark, Azure/C2S, and LLM tooling (LangChain, vLLM, llama.cpp) — all marked preferred.
Multimodal LLMs is subsumed under the LLMs skill rather than emitted as a separate entry, as it is a variant of the same capability.
Requires a TS/SCI clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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