Senior Data Scientist at Second Front Systems

ABOUT THE ROLE Second Front Systems (2F) is seeking an ambitious and visionary Data Scientist to join our mission-driven team. We are a dynamic, fast-growing entrepreneurial company at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and national security, committed to delivering transformative solutions that empower our nation’s defenders. This is an opportunity to play a pivotal role in shaping the future of a company that is redefining the way software is delivered and secured in the defense sector. At 2F, we thrive on innovation and purpose, combining a startup’s agility with a clear mission to support national security. You will be at the forefront of driving the AI strategy behind the deployment and scaling of our and scaling of our revolutionary Game Warden [Upgrade to PRO to see link] platform—an industry-leading tool that is accelerating the secure adoption of mission-critical SaaS solutions for the U.S. government. If you’re ready to contribute to a team that values ingenuity, collaboration, and impact, we want to hear from you. Second Front Systems is building toward an AI-native future, one where artificial intelligence and machine learning are not features bolted onto our products, but the foundation upon which every customer experience, internal workflow, and platform capability is built. Research and Development is the engine driving that transformation. This is a hands-on research and engineering role with organizational reach. The right person is equally comfortable designing an evaluation framework, advising a Product team on model selection, and shipping production-grade AI systems. Note: This role requires U.S. citizenship due to government contract requirements. Additionally, candidates must reside in one of our approved hiring hubs: - DC/Maryland/Virginia - Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC - Denver/Colorado Springs, CO - Dallas/Fort Worth, TX WHAT YOU’LL DO Research and Development - Design, develop, and improve agentic AI systems using LangGraph and LangChain, with a focus on reliability, traceability, and measurable output quality. - Advance our existing capabilities including the DAG driven AI and chatbots by improving reasoning, tool-calling accuracy, and inference confidence. - Develop and mature evaluation frameworks to assess AI-generated outputs across dimensions including groundedness, faithfulness, relevance, context precision, and context recall. - Improve and extend our multi-LLM ensemble system including consensus scoring methods, model weighting, and aggregation strategies. - Design and implement fine-tuning and prompt optimization pipelines for domain-specific cybersecurity and compliance use cases. - Develop AI/ML components for RAG systems, including embedding strategies, retrieval optimization, chunking, and re-ranking. AI-Native Product Transformation - Partner with Product and Engineering teams to identify high-leverage opportunities to introduce AI across onboarding, deployment, monitoring, configuration, and remediation workflows. - Develop and document reusable AI-native components, integration patterns, and deployment blueprints, including single-tenant and multi-tenant LLM serving architectures on AWS Bedrock, Cohere, Anthropic, and OpenAI-compatible providers to accelerate adoption across teams. - Define and promote standards for responsible AI integration: evaluation methodology, explainability, audit logging, data privacy, and model governance. - Act as an internal AI advisor helping Product teams navigate model selection, agent design, RAG implementation, and output quality. - Contribute to building the organizational muscle for AI adoption: documentation, knowledge transfer, and structured learning. SKILLS YOU’LL BRING TO OUR TEAM Who You Are - You move from idea to working prototype quickly and are comfortable with ambiguity. - You care about evaluation, you don't consider something shipped until you know how to measure whether it works and you are deeply committed to documentation. - You can operate at two altitudes: deep in a technical implementation, and at the whiteboard with a Product team scoping what AI can do for a workflow. - You're drawn to hard problems in high-stakes domains. - You write clean, documented, reproducible code and contribute to a culture of knowledge transfer. - You thrive in small teams where your work has direct and visible impact across the organization. Required: - 5 years, or greater, experience in applied machine learning, data science, or AI engineering, with at least 2 years working with large language models in production. - Hands-on experience building agentic AI systems with tool-calling agents, multi-step reasoning pipelines, or DAG-based orchestration (LangGraph, LangChain, or equivalent). - Strong proficiency in Python and the modern ML/AI ecosystem. - Experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation, including vector databases, embedding models, chunking strategies, and retrieval evaluation. - Experience with foundation model APIs across multiple providers: AWS Bedrock, OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, and Meta. - Proven ability to design and implement quantitative evaluation frameworks for LLM or agentic system outputs. - Demonstrated ability to communicate AI concepts and recommendations to non-technical stakeholders and cross-functional teams. - Strong command of statistical reasoning, probabilistic modeling, and experiment design. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS - Experience driving AI adoption or integration across a product organization, not just building models, but enabling others to use them effectively. - Experience with cybersecurity data, vulnerability management, or threat intelligence. - Experience with deployment patterns for containerized applications. - Experience designing or operating multi-tenant and single-tenant LLM serving infrastructure. - Experience with multi-model ensemble methods or multi-agent coordination. - Experience working in or with the Department of Defense, federal agencies, or cleared environments. - Active security clearance or eligibility to obtain one. - Experience with model fine-tuning, RLHF, or PEFT methods. - Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as NIST 800-53, NATO D32, or FedRAMP. - Have a strong interest in matters of national security The expected base salary range for this role is $137,000 to $180,000. Final compensation will be based on factors such as experience, skills, level, and geographic location. This role may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses and equity grants as part of the total compensation package. SUCCESS AT 2F LOOKS LIKE: - Viewing obstacles as opportunities for growth - Having a bias toward action and tangible, measurable results - Striving to be both compassionate and direct with your feedback - Being team-oriented and inclusive with your actions PERKS & BENEFITS This role is full time. As a public benefit corporation, we’re a team of purpose-driven trailblazers transforming the future of U.S. national security. We hire the best to do their best and, as such, we are committed to providing the perks and benefits you need to be successful—both in- and outside the workplace. We offer you: - Competitive Salary - 100% Healthcare, vision and dental coverage - 401(k) + 3% company contribution - Equity incentive plan - Tech + office supplies stipend - Annual professional development stipend - Flexible paid time off + federal holidays off - Parental leave - Work from anywhere - Referral Bonus Visit our careers page [Upgrade to PRO to see link] to learn more. WHO WE ARE Second Front Systems (2F) is a public-benefit software company powering software for the free world. We eliminate the friction that slows innovation, enabling faster, more secure development and deployment of software across government and regulated networks. Built by national security veterans and backed by top-tier venture capital, our platform is trusted by the world’s leading organizations to cut deployment timelines from years to weeks. We move fast, solve hard problems, and deliver trusted capabilities where they’re needed most. Our work strengthens global security and gives the United States and its allies a lasting competitive advantage. Learn more at secondfront.com [Upgrade to PRO to see link] ONE LAST THING… We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Are you ready to join our team? To apply, click the “Apply for This Job” button at the top or bottom of this page and complete the application form. This position will remain open until filled, and applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. STATE NOTICES Colorado: In accordance with Colorado law, applicants may redact their date of birth, dates of attendance, and dates of graduation from any uploaded documents. Maryland: UNDER MARYLAND LAW, AN EMPLOYER MAY NOT REQUIRE OR DEMAND, AS A CONDITION OF EMPLOYMENT, PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYMENT, OR CONTINUED EMPLOYMENT, THAT AN INDIVIDUAL SUBMIT TO OR TAKE A POLYGRAPH EXAMINATION OR SIMILAR TEST. AN EMPLOYER WHO VIOLATES THIS LAW IS GUILTY OF A MISDEMEANOR AND SUBJECT TO A FINE NOT EXCEEDING $100.