Job Requirements
Washington, DC
Top Secret/SCI CI Polygraph
Mid Level Career (5+ yrs experience)
$160,000 - $225,000
Job Description
Senior/Principal AI Engineer, Machine Learning Systems (Active TS/SCI
with CI Poly, Contingent Upon Award)
SynMax, Inc.
National Capital Region, on-site | Full-time employee | Senior $160,000 to $190,000 / Principal
$190,000 to $225,000 | Contingent upon award, anticipated late 2026 to early 2027
About SynMax
SynMax is a Houston-based maritime intelligence company. Our Theia platform fuses synthetic aperture
radar, radio frequency, AIS, and electro-optical data to deliver multi-INT maritime domain awareness to
U.S. Government and commercial customers. Theia is fielded and operational today, and this program
will extend its capabilities into a classified environment for an Intelligence Community customer.
The Role
We are seeking a Senior/Principal AI Engineer to build, deploy, and operate the machine learning
systems on a program that brings the Theia platform into a classified environment for an Intelligence
Community customer. Theia’s detection, fusion, and attribution models are proven on commercial data.
Your job is to make them perform against the customer’s classified data holdings and sensors, which
means adapting existing models, training new sensor-specific models on the high side, and measuring
performance rigorously enough that customer analysts trust the output. You will work alongside the
program’s data scientists, AI engineers, and platform engineers and remain connected to SynMax’s
unclassified data science team. You will join a small team of customer-side engineers working directly in
the customer’s classified environment. Your first weeks will include focused knowledge transfer with
SynMax’s Theia engineering team.
This role is open at the Senior or Principal level. A Senior AI Engineer independently designs, builds, and
deploys ML and AI components within an established architecture. A Principal AI Engineer owns that
architecture and the end-to-end AI system, makes build and design trade-offs that span teams, sets
engineering standards for the high-side environment, and leads and reviews other engineers’ work.
What You Will Do
• Support the program’s data scientists in porting, validating, and tuning Theia’s core analytics,
including vessel detection, multi-INT fusion, attribution, and anomaly detection, for operation
on classified data in the customer’s environment
• Support the program’s data scientists in training new sensor-specific detection and
characterization models against government-furnished imagery and signals data, including
electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar sources
• Package and deploy Theia’s models as production services in the customer’s environment,
including GPU-accelerated inference pipelines, monitoring, drift detection, and retraining
workflows
• Implement evaluation frameworks and ground truth datasets designed by the program’s data
scientists, and report detection rates, false alarm rates, and attribution accuracy in terms
customer analysts can act on
• Productionize the program’s data scientists’ advanced analytics for maritime behavior, including
pattern of life modeling, deceptive behavior detection, and cross-sensor correlation
, • Operate within the compute, data access, and tooling constraints of an air-gapped environment,
including managing model artifacts, dependencies, and reproducibility without external
connectivity
• Document model lineage, training data provenance, and performance to support customer
review and any model governance requirements
• Collaborate with customer analysts to turn mission questions into analytic approaches and with
the program’s platform engineer to move models into production pipelines
• Contribute to full-stack work across the team, including the deployment, monitoring, and
maintenance of the customer-side data and model pipelines
What You Bring
• Advanced degree in a quantitative field or equivalent experience, and extensive applied data
science or machine learning experience, with at least two years in a classified environment
• Hands-on experience training and deploying computer vision or signal processing models on
remote sensing data, specifically synthetic aperture radar or electro-optical imagery
• Strong Python skills and fluency with the standard scientific and machine learning stack,
including PyTorch or TensorFlow, and with GPU-accelerated training
• Experience deploying and serving machine learning models in production, including
containerized, Kubernetes-based services and GPU-accelerated inference
• Experience working with large geospatial and time series datasets, including AIS or comparable
vessel movement data
• Demonstrated rigor in model evaluation, including building ground truth, handling class
imbalance, and communicating uncertainty to non-specialist users
• Experience delivering ML engineering work in an environment without internet access, including
dependency management and reproducible environments
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, startup-style environment, where you will be expected to
pitch in on all aspects of on-prem work, not only modeling
• Experience owning delivery end to end, including deploying models and working with databases,
and working independently with government customers
Preferred
• Experience with national technical means imagery or with fusing commercial and government
sensor data
• Experience with multi-sensor data fusion, track association, or entity resolution
• Familiarity with maritime domain awareness problem sets, including dark vessel detection and
AIS spoofing
Contingent Upon Award
This position is contingent upon contract award. Anticipated award is between late 2026 and early 2027.
SynMax intends to extend contingent offers to selected candidates in advance of award so that the team
is in place at program start. Contingent offers become effective only upon award, and no employment
or compensation begins until that time. Candidates should be available to start within 30 days of award.
Clearance and Eligibility
, • Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility is required. Candidates must hold a current TS/SCI
at the time of application, with an investigation or continuous vetting enrollment that is in scope
and eligible for crossover.
• This position does not offer clearance sponsorship or upgrade. Candidates without a current,
active TS/SCI will not be considered.
• U.S. citizenship is required.
• Candidates must hold a successful counterintelligence polygraph completed within the last
three years. Current or recent work on a TS/SCI NGA program with an NGA-administered
polygraph is strongly preferred.
Employment Type and Location
This is a full-time employee position. The base salary range is $160,000 to $190,000 at the Senior level
and $190,000 to $225,000 at the Principal level, with the level and offer determined by assessed scope,
skills, and experience. Work is performed on site in the National Capital Region at a government or
prime contractor facility. This position is not remote. Occasional travel to SynMax offices in Houston
may be required for unclassified integration work. SynMax is hiring for two positions in this role.
Equal Opportunity
SynMax, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without
regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or
protected veteran status.
with CI Poly, Contingent Upon Award)
SynMax, Inc.
National Capital Region, on-site | Full-time employee | Senior $160,000 to $190,000 / Principal
$190,000 to $225,000 | Contingent upon award, anticipated late 2026 to early 2027
About SynMax
SynMax is a Houston-based maritime intelligence company. Our Theia platform fuses synthetic aperture
radar, radio frequency, AIS, and electro-optical data to deliver multi-INT maritime domain awareness to
U.S. Government and commercial customers. Theia is fielded and operational today, and this program
will extend its capabilities into a classified environment for an Intelligence Community customer.
The Role
We are seeking a Senior/Principal AI Engineer to build, deploy, and operate the machine learning
systems on a program that brings the Theia platform into a classified environment for an Intelligence
Community customer. Theia’s detection, fusion, and attribution models are proven on commercial data.
Your job is to make them perform against the customer’s classified data holdings and sensors, which
means adapting existing models, training new sensor-specific models on the high side, and measuring
performance rigorously enough that customer analysts trust the output. You will work alongside the
program’s data scientists, AI engineers, and platform engineers and remain connected to SynMax’s
unclassified data science team. You will join a small team of customer-side engineers working directly in
the customer’s classified environment. Your first weeks will include focused knowledge transfer with
SynMax’s Theia engineering team.
This role is open at the Senior or Principal level. A Senior AI Engineer independently designs, builds, and
deploys ML and AI components within an established architecture. A Principal AI Engineer owns that
architecture and the end-to-end AI system, makes build and design trade-offs that span teams, sets
engineering standards for the high-side environment, and leads and reviews other engineers’ work.
What You Will Do
• Support the program’s data scientists in porting, validating, and tuning Theia’s core analytics,
including vessel detection, multi-INT fusion, attribution, and anomaly detection, for operation
on classified data in the customer’s environment
• Support the program’s data scientists in training new sensor-specific detection and
characterization models against government-furnished imagery and signals data, including
electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar sources
• Package and deploy Theia’s models as production services in the customer’s environment,
including GPU-accelerated inference pipelines, monitoring, drift detection, and retraining
workflows
• Implement evaluation frameworks and ground truth datasets designed by the program’s data
scientists, and report detection rates, false alarm rates, and attribution accuracy in terms
customer analysts can act on
• Productionize the program’s data scientists’ advanced analytics for maritime behavior, including
pattern of life modeling, deceptive behavior detection, and cross-sensor correlation
, • Operate within the compute, data access, and tooling constraints of an air-gapped environment,
including managing model artifacts, dependencies, and reproducibility without external
connectivity
• Document model lineage, training data provenance, and performance to support customer
review and any model governance requirements
• Collaborate with customer analysts to turn mission questions into analytic approaches and with
the program’s platform engineer to move models into production pipelines
• Contribute to full-stack work across the team, including the deployment, monitoring, and
maintenance of the customer-side data and model pipelines
What You Bring
• Advanced degree in a quantitative field or equivalent experience, and extensive applied data
science or machine learning experience, with at least two years in a classified environment
• Hands-on experience training and deploying computer vision or signal processing models on
remote sensing data, specifically synthetic aperture radar or electro-optical imagery
• Strong Python skills and fluency with the standard scientific and machine learning stack,
including PyTorch or TensorFlow, and with GPU-accelerated training
• Experience deploying and serving machine learning models in production, including
containerized, Kubernetes-based services and GPU-accelerated inference
• Experience working with large geospatial and time series datasets, including AIS or comparable
vessel movement data
• Demonstrated rigor in model evaluation, including building ground truth, handling class
imbalance, and communicating uncertainty to non-specialist users
• Experience delivering ML engineering work in an environment without internet access, including
dependency management and reproducible environments
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced, startup-style environment, where you will be expected to
pitch in on all aspects of on-prem work, not only modeling
• Experience owning delivery end to end, including deploying models and working with databases,
and working independently with government customers
Preferred
• Experience with national technical means imagery or with fusing commercial and government
sensor data
• Experience with multi-sensor data fusion, track association, or entity resolution
• Familiarity with maritime domain awareness problem sets, including dark vessel detection and
AIS spoofing
Contingent Upon Award
This position is contingent upon contract award. Anticipated award is between late 2026 and early 2027.
SynMax intends to extend contingent offers to selected candidates in advance of award so that the team
is in place at program start. Contingent offers become effective only upon award, and no employment
or compensation begins until that time. Candidates should be available to start within 30 days of award.
Clearance and Eligibility
, • Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility is required. Candidates must hold a current TS/SCI
at the time of application, with an investigation or continuous vetting enrollment that is in scope
and eligible for crossover.
• This position does not offer clearance sponsorship or upgrade. Candidates without a current,
active TS/SCI will not be considered.
• U.S. citizenship is required.
• Candidates must hold a successful counterintelligence polygraph completed within the last
three years. Current or recent work on a TS/SCI NGA program with an NGA-administered
polygraph is strongly preferred.
Employment Type and Location
This is a full-time employee position. The base salary range is $160,000 to $190,000 at the Senior level
and $190,000 to $225,000 at the Principal level, with the level and offer determined by assessed scope,
skills, and experience. Work is performed on site in the National Capital Region at a government or
prime contractor facility. This position is not remote. Occasional travel to SynMax offices in Houston
may be required for unclassified integration work. SynMax is hiring for two positions in this role.
Equal Opportunity
SynMax, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without
regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or
protected veteran status.
group id: 91173673