Principal Engineer – Artificial Intelligence

The Aerospace Corporation is the trusted partner to the nation’s space programs, solving the hardest problems and providing unmatched technical expertise. As the operator of a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), we are broadly engaged across all aspects of space— delivering innovative solutions that span satellite, launch, ground, and cyber systems for defense, civil and commercial customers. When you join our team, you’ll be part of a special collection of problem solvers, thought leaders, and innovators. Join us and take your place in space.

At Aerospace, we are committed to providing an inclusive and diverse workplace for all employees to share in our common passion and aspiration – to carry out a mission much bigger than ourselves.

The Aerospace Corporation is the trusted partner to the nation’s space programs, solving the hardest problems and providing unmatched technical expertise. As the operator of a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), we are broadly engaged across all aspects of space— delivering innovative solutions that span satellite, launch, ground, and cyber systems for defense, civil and commercial customers. When you join our team, you’ll be part of a special collection of problem solvers, thought leaders, and innovators. Join us and take your place in space.

At Aerospace, we are committed to providing an inclusive and diverse workplace for all employees to share in our common passion and aspiration – to carry out a mission much bigger than ourselves.  

Work Model

This position is a hybrid work model and can work partially remotely with some onsite work required in El Segundo, CA.

Responsibilities  

The Integrated Data and Applications Subdivision (IDAS) seeks a Principal Engineer dedicated to working across organizational boundaries to provide solutions at the intersection of infrastructure, data, AI, and application to Aerospace and our customers’ missions. We are an innovative and collaborative subdivision that makes meaningful contributions across National Security Space (Air Force, Space Force, NRO, etc.) and Civil and Commercial customers (NASA, NOAA, NNSA, DHS, commercial space, autonomous vehicles, etc.). An ideal candidate is a community-focused senior technical leader, focused on the integration of data and applications to enable technical teams to leverage new waves of technology to further efforts spanning internally funded R&D and customer support for space systems.

Specific duties include:  

• Work across institutional boundaries to develop and promote cross-disciplinary solutions to customer hard problems​
• Coordinate with internal AI/ML/Data Science stakeholders, including the Office of the CTO, Digital Engineering, Mission IT, Modeling & Simulation Modernization, and other relevant corporate initiatives, consulting and providing unique perspective​s and integrated solutions
• Propose technical efforts aligned with customer needs – plan tasks, schedules, and labor estimates  
• Determine tasking, report progress, resolve technical issues, and deliver results
• Recommend specialized technical computing infrastructure needs; plan for and aid in installation and management of infrastructure
• Monitor and evaluate processes, techniques, and performance; design and implement more effective and efficient processes 
• Mentor and develop diverse technical staff in data science and engineering, machine learning engineering, AI research, and application development
• Aid in development and evaluation of industry partnerships
• Design and implement strategies and tactics, with relevant stakeholder input, to leverage AI, Data Science, and related technologies for Aerospace corporate initiatives and customer mission need
• Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change, or new ones may be assigned as needed.

What You Need to be Successful

• Bachelor’s degree from an accredited program in Computer Science, Electrical or Computer Engineering, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, or related field(s)
• 15 or more years of relevant experience
• 5 or more years of leadership experience of Data Science or AI teams
• History of effective cross-disciplinary leadership and teaming
• Demonstrated ability to efficiently manage teams to deliver analysis and insights from data that is often large, unstructured, or unprocessed 
• Experience leading teams to create effective data visualizations or user interfaces (e.g. matplotlib, seaborn, plot.ly, dash, tableau, react) and communicating results to technical and nontechnical audiences 
• Experience developing and implementing software development and machine learning operations best practices (e.g. code, model, and data set version control, experiment