Senior Data Scientist: Statistical Modeling, AI/ML
Aptive
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Jul 13, 2026
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Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior data science role supporting the VA's Electronic Health Record modernization program, focused on statistical modeling, AI/ML evaluation, and data governance. Day-to-day work involves building and maintaining reproducible R-based analytics pipelines, assessing model quality and data integrity across complex healthcare datasets, and producing governed reporting for program and executive audiences. Best suited to someone with deep applied statistics knowledge and hands-on healthcare or federal data experience.
Senior level · 5+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Full-time
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
Roughly 460 people in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (data scientists). range 240–600
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $135,107 (middle half $108,024–$176,763).
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 (8)
The JD requires an 'advanced degree or equivalent experience' — since equivalent experience is explicitly accepted, the degree requirement is set to None.
Python is listed in the minimum qualifications section but framed as 'working knowledge of Python preferred,' making it a preferred rather than a hard gate despite appearing in the requirements block.
Bayesian methods, NLP, time-series modeling, and simulation appear in the primary responsibilities narrative as examples of model types the candidate should be able to work with, but are not explicitly gated in the requirements section; they are marked preferred.
BERTopic, LLMs (including RAG, prompt engineering, LLM/AI agent evaluation), and advanced NLP techniques (TF-IDF, topic modeling) appear only under Desired Qualifications.
Databricks, Azure, Power BI, ServiceNow, SAS, Jira, and Confluence all appear exclusively under Desired Qualifications.
The role requires U.S. Citizenship and the ability to obtain a Public Trust clearance. A Public Trust is a federal suitability determination, not a national security clearance (Confidential/Secret/TS), so the clearance requirement is set to None; however, hiring managers should note that U.S. citizenship is a hard gate.
VA/VHA/federal EHR experience is described as 'strongly preferred' in the minimum qualifications, not a hard gate.
The alt SOC (15-2031 Operations Research Analysts) reflects the significant operational analytics, KPI/reporting, and executive decision-support scope alongside the core data science work.
Read the full posting
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