Sr AI/ML Research Scientist

Program Overview

About The Role

Peraton Labs delivers innovative solutions and revolutionary new capabilities to solve the most difficult and complex challenges for government agencies, utilities, and commercial customers. With a distinguished heritage tracing back to Bell Labs, Bellcore, DHPC, and Telcordia, our experts pave the way. Peraton Labs’ AI/ML research pushes the envelope of technologies, extends state-of-the-art to produce advanced solutions that are customized to meet the objectives of research sponsors and customers. Peraton has been developing the advanced generative AI and agentic AI technologies and applications to address the most challenging problems of its customers.

Roles and responsibilities for this position:

The AI/ML Research Scientist will work with project leads and managers to perform research and development of AI/ML technologies, with primary focus on generative AI using Large Language Models (LLMs). Candidates are expected to work with the R&D team to customize and apply developed technologies to address problems of interest to customers. Candidates are expected to possess ability and experience to perform cutting-edge agentic AI research under the supervision of managers.

Qualifications

Required:

• U.S. Citizenship Required
• Must have the ability to obtain / maintain a Secret clearance
• Bachelor’s degree and 12+ years, Master's degree and 10+ years, or PhD and 7+ years in Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or a related technical field of experience
• Demonstratable AI/ML research experience, academic research publications in peer-reviewed international AI/ML conferences are preferred, unless similar qualifications can be demonstrated
• Development expertise in Python and other programming languages such as C, C++, and Javascript
• Agentic AI development using on of the agent development framework
• Hands-on development experience in AI/ML model building and tuning
• Demonstratable proficiency in working with the state-of-the-art Large Language Models at the API level (During interviews on MS Teams, candidates could be asked to use VSCode or another IDE to execute tasks through programmatic interactions with OpenAI tool/function call API)
• Modern software development practices and toolsets (Linux, Git, CI/CD toolchains, Docker, Postgres)
• AWS knowledge and development skill

Desired:

• Extensive experience of using modern AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code to be a lot more efficient than writing code and debugging code using the conventional approach.
• Machine learning libraries, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc.
• Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• End-to-end machine learning model and multi-modal generative AI agent development experience.
• Orchestration tools such as Terraform and Kubernetes.
• Hands-on AI/ML development experience in a cloud environment, such as AWS Bedrock.
• Full stack programming experience.

SCA / Union / Intern Rate or Range

Details

Target Salary Range: $146,000 - $234,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position. Salary is determined by various factors, including but not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the position, the individual’s experience, education, knowledge, skills, and competencies, as well as geographic location and business and contract considerations. Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay.

Benefits Statement: Peraton offers eligible employees a variety of benefits including medical, dental, vision, life, health savings account, short/long term disability, EAP, parental leave, 401(k), paid time off (PTO) for vacation, and company paid holidays. A full listing of available benefits can be viewed at

Application Duration Statement: The application period for the job is estimated to be 30 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates.

EEO: Equal opportunity employer, including disability and protected veterans, or other characteristics protected by law.