Job Description

Are you searching for important work in the domain of information extraction and natural language processing?

Are you passionate about building solutions for our greatest national security challenges?

Do you like contributing to multidisciplinary teams in a creative and collaborative environment?

If so, we're looking for someone like you to join our team at APL.

The Threat Analytics Systems Group (QAI) at APL is seeking a Senior Information Extraction Data Scientist to help us address key information extraction challenges and bring research from concept to reality.

QAI is a multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers committed to extracting, representing, and reasoning over knowledge to make a real-world impact in the areas of national defense, global health, intelligence, and security. We focus on providing critical tools and insights to our government sponsors, helping them to explore, curate, and make sense of multi-modal data at scale.

We are seeking a technical expert who is motivated to support and lead projects with strong information extraction and AI/ML components, particularly focused on natural language processing (NLP). In this role you will work with engineers and researchers from across APL, academia, and sponsor organizations to not only identify how a problem may be solved, but to implement those solutions in software systems. While you will focus on extracting meaning from data to meet sponsor requirements, you will also be challenged and empowered to define the conversation: helping external stakeholders understand what is possible and working with internal stakeholders to define the future of our tools and approaches.

At APL we make critical contributions to our nation’s critical challenges, and we do so in a collaborative, inclusive environment that cultivates curiosity, innovation, and creativity. If you’re interested in applying your technical skills to find novel solutions to unique problems, we want to hear from you.

As a Senior Information Extraction Data Scientist, you will...

• Contribute to novel machine learning research, improving our ability to understand, represent, and reason about knowledge in text.
• Communicate approaches, results, and impact to management, government sponsors, and the broader scientific community through papers, presentations, and technical reports.
• Lead and collaborate on technical proposals to grow and define machine learning capabilities including but not limited to NLP, information extraction, and knowledge representation.
• Develop software to implement data science approaches.
• Cultivate a long-term technical and research vision, collaborating with other researchers and experts to address challenges determined by sponsor requirements.
• Design creative AI/ML algorithms as well as develop analytic pipelines for analyzing large-scale, complex data.
• Develop data architectures and pipelines to support analytic algorithms.
• Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team to design, prototype, and develop ways to make ML models fast, performant, robust, and reliable under various data constraints, such as having limited labeled data or shifted domains.
• Provide insight into the benefits and risks of proposed solutions to sponsor challenges, understanding and communicating not only how a problem could be solved, but how it can best be solved with given time, domain, or technical constraints.

You meet our minimum qualifications for the job if you have...

• A M.S. in a subject area related to artificial intelligence, machine learning, or data science (e.g., Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, or Engineering).
• Demonstrated ability to conduct machine learning research and develop production-ready software
• Proven ability in defining machine learning problems, particularly in NLP and knowledge representation, and identifying possible solutions given real-world constraints.
• Proficiency with programming languages used in AI research (e.g., Python), and familiarity with machine learning libraries (e.g., PyTorch, Tensorflow) and NLP libraries (e.g., spaCy, HuggingFace).
• Proficiency with software development.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills and the ability to articulate complex technical issues to a wide range of audiences.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a team environment.
• Are able to obtain a Secret level security clearance.  If selected, you will be subject to a government security clearance investigation and must meet the requirements for access to classified information. Eligibility requirements include U.S. citizenship.

You'll go above and beyond our minimum requirements if you have...

• A Doctorate degree in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering or relevant area.
• Experience proposing new ideas for research and development to stakeholders and potential sponsors.
• Experience writing technical proposals or other forms of business development.
• Experience with applications for national security or the intelligence community.
• A track record of publishing research in scholarly journals or conferences (e.g., ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, AAAI).
• Experience with information extraction problems and approaches, including coreference resolution, named entity recognition, relation extraction, entity linking, event extraction.
• Experience with other programming languages (e.g., Java).
• Experience with software engineering processes, techniques, and tools.
• An active security clearance.

Why work at APL?

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) brings world-class expertise to our nation’s most critical defense, security, space and science challenges. While we are dedicated to solving complex challenges and pioneering new technologies, what makes us truly outstanding is our culture. We offer a vibrant, welcoming atmosphere where you can bring your authentic self to work, continue to grow, and build strong connections with inspiring teammates.

At APL, we celebrate our differences and encourage creativity and bold, new ideas. Our employees enjoy generous benefits, including a robust education assistance program, unparalleled retirement contributions, and a healthy work/life balance. APL’s campus is located in the Baltimore-Washington metro area. Learn more about our career opportunities at http://www.jhuapl.edu/careers.

APL is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, occupation, marital or familial status, political opinion, personal appearance, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

APL is committed to promoting an innovative environment that embraces diversity, encourages creativity, and supports inclusion of new ideas. In doing so, we are committed to providing reasonable accommodation to individuals of all abilities, including those with disabilities. If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in any part of the hiring process, please contact Accommodations@jhuapl.edu. Only by ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard are we empowered to be bold, do great things, and make the world a better place.

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