Job Requirements
Reston, VA
Secret Polygraph Unspecified
Senior Level Career (10+ yrs experience)
$225,000 - $275,000
Job Description
Quantum Sky is hiring a Chief Scientist, AI/ML. You set the AI/ML technical bar for Project 137, and every team builds on your models, methods, and infrastructure. Reports to the Chief AI Officer. Onsite at the Project 137 lab preferred; remote with regular travel considered.
Project 137 is Quantum Sky's applied-research and IP engine. It is a small, cleared, elite team that builds the differentiated technology our business units take to DoW, IC, and Federal Civilian missions. It runs four pillars: Quantum, Cyber, Decision Advantage (AI applications), and Digital Platforms & Infrastructure. This role sits across all four.
The mission is to make Quantum Sky's AI better than anything a program office can buy off the shelf. Frontier models are a commodity. The advantage lives in what we build around them: models tuned on scarce and classified mission data, computer vision that finds the target, agents a program executive can trust and accredit, and the harness and hardware that run it all on-prem and at the edge. You set that bar, you lead the people who hold it, and you are the name customers and recruits recognize.
Three things you will own:
What you own and drive:
You lead a core team of 2–3 senior scientists and engineers. You also hold technical authority over the AI/ML engineers embedded in each pillar: you set the methods, the stack, and the hiring bar, and the pillars execute on them.
What success looks like:
We measure this role on fielded capability, pillar velocity, and IP that Quantum Sky keeps.
Qualifications
Required:
Desired:
Clearance:
Project 137 is Quantum Sky's applied-research and IP engine. It is a small, cleared, elite team that builds the differentiated technology our business units take to DoW, IC, and Federal Civilian missions. It runs four pillars: Quantum, Cyber, Decision Advantage (AI applications), and Digital Platforms & Infrastructure. This role sits across all four.
The mission is to make Quantum Sky's AI better than anything a program office can buy off the shelf. Frontier models are a commodity. The advantage lives in what we build around them: models tuned on scarce and classified mission data, computer vision that finds the target, agents a program executive can trust and accredit, and the harness and hardware that run it all on-prem and at the edge. You set that bar, you lead the people who hold it, and you are the name customers and recruits recognize.
Three things you will own:
- The model layer. Project 137's shared AI/ML stack: model selection and routing across frontier and open-weight models, fine-tuning on mission data, retrieval, and inference at IL5/IL6 and the tactical edge. Every pillar consumes it.
- The harness. The AI/MLOps and agent harness that takes a model or agent from experiment to cleared production: pipelines, evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and governance, running on our own on-prem compute.
- Mission evals. The test-and-evaluation framework that proves a model or agent works on a real mission task, fails safely, and holds up under adversarial pressure. It is our answer to "how do you know it works?"
What you own and drive:
You lead a core team of 2–3 senior scientists and engineers. You also hold technical authority over the AI/ML engineers embedded in each pillar: you set the methods, the stack, and the hiring bar, and the pillars execute on them.
- The AI/ML vision. Define and socialize Project 137's AI/ML roadmap across all four pillars. Decide where we lead, where we follow, and where we stop spending.
- LLMs on mission data. Fine-tune, distill, and serve models on scarce, sensitive, and classified data. Own retrieval, model routing, and inference optimization from the cloud to disconnected and SWaP-constrained environments.
- Computer vision and ATR. Lead automatic target recognition and sensor exploitation: detection, classification, and tracking across EO/IR, SAR, RF, and emerging sensor modalities, and fusion into a decision-grade picture with our Decision Advantage team.
- Agentic AI and evals. Architect multi-agent systems that do real mission work, with the guardrails, auditability, and evaluation that make them accreditable. Build the mission eval harness every pillar uses before anything ships.
- AI/MLOps and the harness. Own the path from notebook to cleared production: training and eval pipelines, model registry, deployment, monitoring, drift detection, and rollback. Make it repeatable so pillars ship without reinventing it.
- On-prem compute. Shape and run the AI hardware in our lab: GPU clusters, scheduling, storage, and networking, plus air-gapped and classified deployment patterns. Decide what runs on-prem, what runs in government cloud, and what runs at the edge.
- IP that Quantum Sky keeps. Quantum Sky retains IP by default. You decide what we build, partner for, or buy, and you shape the wrappers we build around frontier and open-weight models.
- The technical face of AI/ML. Brief program-of-record owners and CIO/CTO/CDAO offices across DoW, IC, and FedCiv. Speak at conferences, publish, and represent Quantum Sky in the AI/ML community. Support technical diligence on AI/ML M&A targets.
- The bench. Recruit, develop, and keep AI/ML talent across Project 137. You are a reason strong people join.
What success looks like:
We measure this role on fielded capability, pillar velocity, and IP that Quantum Sky keeps.
Qualifications
Required:
- The track record. 12+ years in AI/ML, including 5+ years leading AI/ML teams. You have fielded AI systems in production that people depend on, not only prototypes and papers.
- LLMs in production. Hands-on fine-tuning, retrieval, evaluation, and inference optimization of large language models on domain-specific data.
- Computer vision. Shipped computer vision or ATR systems: detection, classification, tracking, or sensor fusion on real-world imagery or signals.
- Agentic systems. Recent hands-on work building multi-agent systems, with the evaluation and guardrails that make them trustworthy. You know the difference between an agent demo and an agent you would put in front of a mission.
- AI/MLOps and harness development. Built the pipelines, eval harnesses, and model lifecycle tooling that take models and agents from experiment to production, including monitoring, drift detection, and rollback.
- On-prem hardware. Designed, stood up, or operated on-prem AI compute: GPU clusters, high-speed interconnect, workload scheduling, and storage, ideally in air-gapped or classified settings.
- Mission context. Delivered AI/ML to DoW, IC, or Federal Civilian customers, or in another regulated, high-consequence environment. Comfortable with accreditation, IL5/IL6, and Responsible AI requirements.
Desired:
- Research pedigree. PhD in computer science, electrical engineering, statistics, or a related field. Peer-reviewed publications at top venues, patents, or widely used open-source work.
- A recognized voice. Conference talks, public writing, or community leadership that people in AI/ML know you for.
- Active TS/SCI.
- Edge AI. Fielded models in disconnected, intermittent, or SWaP-constrained environments.
- Adversarial ML. Hands-on experience red-teaming models and agents, or defending them against attack.
- Quantum-curious. Interest in where quantum and quantum-inspired methods may help AI/ML, and the judgment to tell a real result from hype.
Clearance:
- Active Secret or TS/SCI preferred; strong candidates may be sponsored.
group id: 91085617
