Vienna - Virginia - United States

Salary
Posted
Jun 29, 2026
Location
Vienna - Virginia - United States
Last confirmed open
Jul 21, 2026

What this job asks for AI summary

A senior individual contributor and team lead role focused on delivering end-to-end AI and machine learning solutions for U.S. public sector and government clients. The position serves as the primary technical point of contact for government agency partnerships, overseeing solution architecture, model development, and full lifecycle delivery. It suits an experienced data scientist with a background in government-facing work, cloud platforms, and leading technical teams.

Senior level · 10+ years · National · Bachelor's required · Full-time

Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.

Must have (5)
machine learningdeep learningNLPPython, Java or GoAWS, Azure or GCP

“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

What won't set you apart
Python88%machine learning80%deep learning40%

Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.

What the occupation pays Median $120,230 (middle half $85,660–$158,880).

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 title 'Senior Principal Data Scientist – AI Lead' is treated as Principal for advertised seniority. However, the actual requirements (10+ years, team leadership, end-to-end delivery) are consistent with a Senior-level role — 'Principal' in this context appears to be a seniority label used internally by D&B rather than evidence of org-wide technical authority.

Government/public sector experience is listed as a preference ('with a preference working with Government / public sector clients'), not a hard gate.

An advanced degree (Master's or higher) is listed as preferred, not required; the hard minimum is a Bachelor's degree.

Python, Java, and Go are presented as interchangeable options ('languages like Python, Java, or Go'); Python is listed as the primary with the others as alternatives.

AWS, Azure, and GCP are presented as interchangeable cloud platform options; AWS is listed as primary with the others as alternatives.

Many listed skills (strategic thinking, communication, adaptability, ethical AI, problem-solving) are soft skills or generic competencies and are not emitted as named technology skills.

No compensation figures are provided in the posting.

Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): AI automation.

Read the full posting

The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.

Apply

Apply on employer site ↗