Artificial Intelligence Senior Data Scientist

Edgewater Federal Solutions is seeking a highly skilled Senior Data Scientist to supporting our client as part of its newly established AI Lab. This innovative team is focused on researching, developing, and deploying advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Generative AI solutions that improve operational efficiency, enhance analytical capabilities, and support the division's consumer protection and community development mission.

The Senior Data Scientist will serve as a full-stack AI practitioner responsible for the complete lifecycle of AI/ML solutions—from research and model development through deployment, monitoring, and production support. This role requires hands-on expertise in Generative AI, data science, application development, visualization, cloud deployment, and MLOps practices. The successful candidate will thrive in a collaborative, agile environment and possess the ability to translate complex business challenges into scalable AI-driven solutions.

This work can be performed remotely, and does require US Citizenship, this role is for a 6 month long period and not anticipated to be extended.  

AI/ML & Generative AI Development

• Research, design, and develop Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning solutions supporting DCCA business objectives.
• Build proof-of-concept AI solutions and transition successful prototypes into production environments.
• Design and implement applications utilizing Large Language Models (LLMs) for document processing, summarization, classification, workflow automation, and information extraction.
• Develop and optimize prompt engineering strategies and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures.
• Evaluate, customize, fine-tune, and validate AI models to improve accuracy and business value.
• Apply advanced statistical and machine learning methodologies, including:
• Supervised and unsupervised learning
• Classification and regression modeling
• Deep learning techniques
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Application Development, Deployment & Operations

• Build, deploy, and maintain AI/ML applications across cloud and on-premises environments.
• Develop interactive dashboards and analytical applications using frameworks such as Streamlit, Dash, Flask, or R Shiny.
• Create compelling visualizations and user interfaces using tools such as Tableau, Power BI, Plotly, Matplotlib, Seaborn, and ggplot2.
• Implement CI/CD pipelines, containerization strategies, and automated deployment processes using Docker and related technologies.
• Establish monitoring, logging, alerting, model performance tracking, and automated retraining capabilities.
• Optimize GenAI deployments, including API management, rate limiting, and cost controls.
• Troubleshoot application and infrastructure issues while ensuring system scalability and reliability.
• Support security, privacy, compliance, and governance requirements for deployed solutions.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Participate in Agile ceremonies, including sprint planning, standups, and retrospectives.
• Collaborate directly with economists, analysts, attorneys, technical teams, and executive leadership.
• Translate business requirements into scalable AI and data science solutions.
• Communicate technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Prepare technical documentation, knowledge transfer materials, reports, and executive briefings.
• Mentor team members and contribute to the growth of DCCA's AI/ML capabilities and best practices.

Governance & Responsible AI

• Support compliance with federal governance frameworks, including FISMA, privacy requirements, and records management standards.
• Coordinate with security, privacy, compliance, and enterprise technology stakeholders.
• Apply Responsible AI principles, including fairness, transparency, interpretability, accountability, and bias mitigation.
• Assist with development of security documentation, privacy impact assessments, and Authority to Operate (ATO) packages where required.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical discipline.
• Master's degree preferred.

Experience

• Minimum of six (6) years of experience developing, deploying, and maintaining AI/ML solutions in enterprise, government, academic, or research environments.
• Demonstrated experience owning projects from concept through deployment and operational support.
• Experience working independently in highly collaborative cross-functional environments.

 Technical Skills

• Expert-level proficiency in Python and/or R.
• Extensive experience with machine learning and statistical modeling frameworks.
• Strong experience developing and deploying AI/ML applications in cloud environments.
• Experience with:
• Generative AI technologies and Large Language Models
• Prompt engineering and RAG architectures
• Application development frameworks (Streamlit, Dash, Flask, R Shiny)
• Data visualization tools and libraries
• Docker and containerized deployments
• CI/CD practices and DevOps fundamentals
• NLP technologies including Named Entity Recognition (NER), POS tagging, embeddings, and text analytics
• Experience with frameworks such as:
• Scikit-learn
• SpaCy
• XGBoost
• Other modern AI/ML frameworks

Clearance & Eligibility

• U.S. Citizenship required.
• Ability to successfully obtain and maintain any required Federal Reserve Board background investigation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting federal government, regulatory, or policy-focused organizations.
• Experience working with banking, financial services, consumer finance, or regulatory data.
• Knowledge of Agile methodologies, Scrum, Kanban, Jira, and Azure DevOps.
• Experience with:
• GPT, Llama, Nova, and similar LLM APIs
• LangChain and LlamaIndex
• Vector databases and semantic search solutions
• Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, Comprehend, Rekognition, and Transcribe
• EC2, ECS, Lambda, S3, CloudWatch
• Databricks
• Terraform and CloudFormation
• Knowledge of MLOps best practices, automated retraining, monitoring, and model governance.
• Experience building production-grade web applications and advanced user interfaces.
• Familiarity with explainable AI, fairness evaluation, and model interpretability.
• Understanding of multimodal AI technologies.
• AWS certifications such as:
• AWS Solutions Architect
• AWS Machine Learning Specialty
• Other relevant cloud certifications
• Experience handling sensitive, regulated, or protected data.

Salary: $134,000 - $139,000

Additional benefits include: 

• Paid Time Off & Holiday Pay
• Medical Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Disability, Life Insurance, and AD&D
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Pre-Tax 401K and/or After-Tax Roth IRA (with employer matching contribution)
• Tuition and Technical Training Reimbursement
• Exercise Reimbursement
• Computer Reimbursement
• Employee Assistance Program

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• Regularly required to sit, stand, talk, hear, and use hands and fingers to operate a computer, keyboard, telephone, and standard office equipment.
• Specific vision abilities required include close vision for computer-based work.
• Occasionally required to lift and/or move up to 15 pounds.
• Fine hand manipulation and extended keyboard usage required.

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job.

• Exposure to general office conditions while conducting office duties.
• Moderate noise environment typical of a business office.
• Ability to work in a confined office environment.
• Ability to sit at a computer terminal for extended periods of time.

About Us: 

Edgewater Federal Solutions is a privately held government contracting firm located in Frederick, MD. The company was founded in 2002 with the vision of being highly recognized and admired for supporting customer missions through employee empowerment, exceptional services and timely delivery. Edgewater Federal Solutions is ISO 9001, 20000-1, 270001 certified, appraised at CMMI Level 3 Maturity for Development and Services, and has been named in the Top Workplaces in the Greater Washington Area Small Companies for 2018 through 2025.

It has been and continues to be the policy of Edgewater Federal Solutions to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, and/or other statuses protected by applicable law.