AI/Machine Learning Research Scientist (Remote Eligible)
Knoxville Technology Council · Oak Ridge, TN
$145,170–$177,430from the description
Jul 14, 2026
Oak Ridge, TN
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
Senior level · 4+ years · Remote · Doctorate required · TS/SCI clearance · 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
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
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). This posting is about at that midpoint.
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 'Machine Learning Research Scientist' carries no explicit seniority level word, so the title states no level; the PhD requirement plus 4+ years of applied experience and independent research scope support a Senior classification.
SOC is Medium confidence: the role is primarily ML/AI research (15-2051 Data Scientists) but has a strong software/pipeline engineering component that could also fit 15-1252 Software Developers; 15-2051 was chosen because the posting emphasizes research, model training, and publication.
The clearance requirement is SCI (Secret Compartmented Information) from the Department of Energy — mapped to TopSecretSci. Visa sponsorship is explicitly unavailable.
'machine learning' and 'computer vision' are retained as skills here because the JD gates on them as named technical disciplines with specific sub-tasks (object detection, segmentation, VQA, change detection) rather than as generic soft concepts.
Spatio-temporal datasets, remote sensing imagery, and distributed computing appear under Preferred Qualifications and are marked accordingly.
The double '$$' in the salary figures appears to be a formatting artifact; the range is interpreted as $145,170–$177,430 per year.
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.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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