remote

Salary
$150,000–$170,000from the description
Posted
Aug 17, 2026
Location
—
Last confirmed open
Aug 18, 2026

What this job asks for AI summary

A data scientist role supporting the Defense Health Agency's DHMSM program, focused on building and deploying AI/ML solutions — including NLP, LLMs, RAG, and semantic search — that inform health and readiness decisions across the DoD enterprise. The role spans the full ML lifecycle from research and prototyping through production deployment, working with large-scale distributed compute environments and cloud-based data infrastructure.

Senior level · 5+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · Top Secret clearance · Full-time

Must have (15)
NLPLLMsRAGApache Spark or DatabricksPython, R, Scala, Java or C++GitSQLPostgreSQLpgvectorGPU computingKubernetestext embeddingcomputer visionreinforcement learningneural networks
Nice to have (3)
CompTIA Security+, CISSP, Casp+ or CehAgile or DevSecOpsMHS GENESIS

“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.

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 gives you an edge
pgvector3%RAG8%computer vision8%

Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.

What won't set you apart
Python88%SQL72%neural networks40%

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). 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 Aug 18, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.

Why we read it this way (7)

The clearance requirement is nuanced: the posting accepts candidates who currently hold an active Secret clearance with the willingness to obtain TS/SCI, but also states 'must currently hold an active Top Secret security clearance' as the primary gate. Clearance is set to TopSecret to reflect the stated minimum acceptable active clearance, with the understanding that TS/SCI is the ultimate target.

The experience requirement has two acceptable paths: Bachelor's + 7–10 years, or Master's + 5 years. The overall years minimum is set to 5 (the lower bound of the Master's path); the Bachelor's path implies 7+ years. Degree requirement is set to Bachelor's as the minimum stated degree.

Apache Spark and Databricks are listed together as a single distributed compute requirement; Databricks is captured as an alternative since the posting treats them as a paired environment.

GPU computing and Kubernetes (GPU-enabled clusters) appear in the responsibilities narrative but are also clearly technical requirements for the role's core workloads.

DoD/DHA enterprise experience and familiarity with DHMSM/MHS GENESIS are listed under Preferred Qualifications.

The location is not explicitly stated in the posting; the Defense Health Agency is headquartered in the Washington DC metro area, so that CBSA is used as the best inference. Some travel (10–15%) to DoD/DHA sites is required.

Requires a Top Secret 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.

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