Hiring Event – Chief Data Scientist V

About the role

Great minds meet great challenges. Ready to build what’s next? At PNNL, our core capabilities are divided among major departments that we refer to as Directorates within the Lab, focused on a specific area of scientific research or other function, with its own leadership team and dedicated budget. Our Science & Technology directorates include National Security, Integrated Discovery Sciences, and Energy and Environment. In addition, we have an Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy, Office of Science user facility housed on the PNNL campus. The National Security Directorate (NSD) drives science-based, mission-focused solutions to take on complex, real-world threats to our nation and the world. The AI and Data Analytics Division, part of NSD, combines profound domain expertise and creative integration of advanced hardware and software to deliver computational solutions that address complex data and analytic challenges. Working in multidisciplinary teams, we connect foundational research to engineering to operations, providing the tools to innovate quickly and field results faster. Our strengths are integrated across the data analytics lifecycle, from data acquisition and management to analysis and decision support. Our hiring event will take place during the weeks of October 12th to November 13th. Selected candidates may be invited to participate in virtual and onsite interviews during this timeframe and will be contacted directly with scheduling details. This role is performed full-time onsite at the PNNL campus in Richland, WA or Seattle, WA.

Responsibilities

• With new projects and expanding programs, our AI and Data Analytics Division offers opportunities to advance cutting-edge research and build solutions for critical national security missions.
• Join a team of more than 400 data scientists, software engineers, mathematicians, and human-centered computing researchers turning ambitious ideas into real-world capabilities.
• We’re looking for passionate Chief Data Scientists who are motivated to advance the state of the art in AI for national security missions.

Skills

• Hyperspectral: Advance mission-focused applications of hyperspectral imaging, remote sensing, and geospatial intelligence. We are looking for experienced data scientists with strong scientific foundations and expertise in spectral sensing, radiometric and atmospheric correction, machine learning-based detection and classification, spectral unmixing, multimodal data fusion, sensor characterization, or related GEOINT workflows.
• Generative AI & Agentic Systems Research: Advance applied research in adapting and aligning foundation models, designing advanced reasoning architectures, and enhancing the performance, behavior, or capabilities of agentic frameworks. Relevant expertise includes training, alignment, parameter-efficient tuning, and augmenting LLMs/VLMs, or designing novel agentic architectures with advanced routing, retrieval, tool integration, and state-space representation. Opportunities include investigating and transitioning enhanced AI capabilities for complex, mission-specific reasoning, high-consequence decision support, reasoning over unstructured or semi-structured knowledge bases, and mission-informed tasks operating under real-world constraints.
• AI Test & Evaluation: Lead research efforts in defining, designing, and validating rigorous Test & Evaluation (T&E) methods to characterize the capabilities, limitations, and operational readiness of AI models and systems. Relevant expertise includes evaluation beyond aggregate metrics, probing model internals, explainable AI, adversarial ML (blue/red teaming), uncertainty