AI/ML Research Scientist – Integrated Mission Management (IMM)
Location: Herndon, VA / Northern Virginia (Hybrid Eligible)
About the Role
Peraton is seeking an AI/ML Research Scientist to support the Integrated Mission Management (IMM) program within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) mission environment.
IMM enables enterprise Collection Prioritization, Requirements Management, and intelligence search capabilities across multiple classified domains (SIPR, JWICS, partner environments). This position will focus on advancing next-generation AI/ML capabilities that enhance decision advantage, search relevance, prioritization scoring, unstructured data exploitation, and cross-domain intelligence integration.
Unlike a traditional production-focused data science role, this position will emphasize research, prototyping, experimentation, and transitioning innovative AI capabilities into operational mission systems.
Primary Responsibilities
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Conduct applied research in AI/ML methods relevant to intelligence collection management and search optimization
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Develop experimental prototypes for prioritization modeling, ranking algorithms, and decision-support systems
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Research and implement NLP techniques for structured and unstructured intelligence data (PDFs, reports, OCR-extracted text)
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Explore transformer-based architectures, embedding models, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) approaches
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Design model evaluation frameworks for operational intelligence use cases
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Conduct experimentation in model explainability, bias mitigation, and trustworthiness
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Develop advanced feature engineering and representation learning strategies
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Support development of knowledge graphs, graph-based reasoning, or semantic modeling approaches
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Collaborate with Data Engineering and Software teams to transition prototypes into production-ready systems
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Publish internal technical whitepapers and research briefs to inform leadership decisions
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Support AI governance, data readiness, and feature registry development initiatives
