Early Career Computer Science - Developer, Onsite

Sandia National Laboratories is the nation's premier science and engineering lab for national security and technology innovation, with teams of specialists focused on cutting-edge work in a broad array of areas. Some of the main reasons we love our jobs:

• Challenging work with amazing impact that contributes to security, peace, and freedom worldwide
• Extraordinary co-workers
• Some of the best tools, equipment, and research facilities in the world
• Career advancement and enrichment opportunities
• Flexible work arrangements for many positions include 9/80 (work 80 hours every two weeks, with every other Friday off) and 4/10 (work 4 ten-hour days each week) compressed workweeks, part-time work, and telecommuting (a mix of onsite work and working from home)
• Generous vacation, strong medical and other benefits, competitive 401k, learning opportunities, relocation assistance and amenities aimed at creating a solid work/life balance*

World-changing technologies. Life-changing careers. Learn more about Sandia at: http://www.sandia.gov

*These benefits vary by job classification.

Join our team as a developer of data science and AI applications. We provide AI and data science solutions for national security challenges. Much of our work involves rapid prototyping of new methods in close collaboration with our users on real-world challenges. We need talented, creative staff able to develop AND code novel analytic methods and visualizations. Strong communication and teamwork skills and AI-readiness are critical. Expertise in both software development and data science very much preferred. In this role, you will be able to grow your technical and leadership skills, chart your career path, and see your impact on national problems.

On any given day you may be called on to:

• Develop a new technique to discover illicit transactions in a sea of ordinary ones.
• Learn about a new adversary tactic and brainstorm means to prevent, detect, or prosecute it.
• Review and conduct data science experiments on national security data to assess a new application of an algorithm.
• Evaluate a tool or technique for the sponsor.
• Code up a new tool, demo it to sponsors, and support them as they prototype it.
• Provide direct analytics support to a user conducting investigations.
• Help us further incorporate AI-enabled coding pipelines and ensure code quality and correctness.
• Help us use AI to accelerate our analytics development processes.
• Analyze current systems and architectures and propose innovative solutions for the future.
• Develop and provide user training for a new tool.
• Work with commercial and other contractors to harmonize our tools and engineering with theirs.

Applicants on this requisition may be interviewed by multiple organizations at Sandia National Laboratories.

Due to the nature of the work, the selected applicant must be able to work onsite.

$102,400 - $199,700

*Salary range is estimated, and actual salary will be determined after consideration of the selected candidate's experience and qualifications, and application of any approved geographic salary differential.

• A Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline, or an equivalent combination of directly relevant education and engineering or scientific experience that demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and ability to perform independent research and development.
• Ability to obtain and maintain DOE Q-level security clearance.

The ideal R&D S&E Computer Science candidate for Sandia National Laboratories will in addition possess the following:

• Graduate degree in Computer Science or a highly related field where an independent research project was a graduation requirement (e.g., independent project, thesis, or dissertation).
• Demonstrated software development skills and familiarity with modern software development practices and tools (e.g., Agile).
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, ability to work effectively in multidisciplinary teams, and a passion to improve and expand technical skills.

Also, for this posting we are seeking individuals with the following experience:

• Experience with the following:
  • Data science research.
  • Leadership and aptitude.
  • Using and implementing AI.
  • AI-assisted coding or data science.
  • Coding as part of a team on a codebase in use.
  • Architecting code bases and leading coding teams and tasks.
  • Building and deploying user-facing analytic tools.
  • Developing cloud-native and containerized applications.
  • Working with real-world datasets - ideally large and complex - including cleaning, validation, exploratory analysis, and feature engineering.
• Familiarity with collaborative software practices (e.g., git, basic testing, documentation)
• Ability to learn new tools quickly and adapt to changing priorities.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment.
• Knowledge of a broad array of AI and data science techniques (e.g., deep learning, image analysis, graphs, text analytics, statistical methods, tensors, Markov models, supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques).
• Active DOE Q-level security clearance or equivalent (e.g., DOD Top Secret).

In the All-Source Analytics Department (5852) our goal is to produce analytic techniques that yield a decisive advantage to our national security sponsors in their missions. We always prefer to work backwards from the questions and decisions before our sponsors to the data, analytics, and software that will answer those questions and inform those decisions. For this reason, we deal in all varieties of data and a diverse assortment of analytic techniques. Our work spans from pure research to highly applied efforts with real-time consequences. We look for the few bad needles in stacks of good ones; we detect deception; and we provide indications and warning of negative events. Our specialties include text and social analytics, graphs, tabular data, image data, and transactional data. We strive to be the best at innovating real-time in close collaboration with domain experts on their real problems using an approach we call Forward-Deployed Analytics. We are curious and technically passionate, and we foster an expert, professional, inclusive, joyful, caring, casual, team environment in which real-time feedback and improvement is the norm.

This posting will be open for application submissions for a minimum of three (3) calendar days, including the 'posting date'. Sandia reserves the right to extend the posting date at any time.

Sandia is required by DOE to conduct a pre-employment drug test and background review that includes checks of personal references, credit, law enforcement records, and employment/education verifications. Applicants for employment need to be able to obtain and maintain a DOE Q-level security clearance, which requires U.S. citizenship. If you hold more than one citizenship (i.e., of the U.S. and another country), your ability to obtain a security clearance may be impacted.

Applicants offered employment with Sandia are subject to a federal background investigation to meet the requirements for access to classified information or matter if the duties of the position require a DOE security clearance. Substance abuse or illegal drug use, falsification of information, criminal activity, serious misconduct or other indicators of untrustworthiness can cause a clearance to be denied or terminated by DOE, resulting in the inability to perform the duties assigned and subsequent termination of employment.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status and any other protected class under state or federal law.

If you have a Medical Portable Electronic Device (MedPED), such as a pacemaker, defibrillator, drug-releasing pump, hearing aids, or diagnostic equipment and other equipment for measuring, monitoring, and recording body functions such as heartbeat and brain waves, if employed by Sandia National Laboratories you may be required to comply with NNSA security requirements for MedPEDs.

If you have a MedPED and you are selected for an on-site interview at Sandia National Laboratories, there may be additional steps necessary to ensure compliance with NNSA security requirements prior to the interview date.