Lead AI Engineer

About the role

MITRE’s Trustworthy & Secure AI (TSAI) Department consists of a diverse team united by a passion and a sense of urgency to harness trustworthy and assured artificial intelligence (AI) to help solve problems in the public interest. The TSAI Department supports our sponsors' missions by delivering capabilities for securing and increasing trust in AI-enabled systems, including data driven AI risk awareness and mitigation, AI red teaming, and trusted tools and techniques for applying AI in high consequence environments. The TSAI Department works across government, industry, and academia to provide, assess, and shape trustworthy and secure AI systems to address complex mission needs for our sponsors. Our work provides opportunities to address real-world challenges in the rapidly developing field of AI assurance, and to research and prototype new methods to address mission needs. We are looking for highly motivated, adaptive, and self-directed candidates to perform research, development, engineering, evaluation, and integration of secure AI systems.

Responsibilities

• Assess threats to AI systems, research and development of defenses and mitigations against adversarial AI tactics and techniques
• Perform AI adversarial threat analysis to identify and characterize vulnerabilities in real-world national security systems
• Work as a technical subject matter expert within a team of intelligence analysts to research, analyze and produce intelligence reports
• Assess threats to AI-enabled systems and use of AI by adversaries
• Convey complex ideas to non-technical audiences through intelligence production, briefings and/or white papers

Requirements

• Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of experience in artificial intelligence with a Bachelor's degree in a relevant field; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years’ experience; or equivalent combination of AI-related education and work experience
• Advanced understanding of foundational AI/ML theory, with demonstrated ability to reason about AI system behavior, vulnerabilities, and evaluation
• Hands-on experience with building and evaluating computer vision systems
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to articulate challenging technical concepts to both lay and expert audiences
• Proven ability to lead interdisciplinary teams and engage senior mission stakeholders across technical and operational domains
• Must have an active Top Secret/SCI and must be eligible to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI with CI Polygraph U.S Government issued Security Clearance. Per the U.S. Government’s eligibility requirements, you must be a U.S Citizen to be considered for a security clearance
• This position has an on-site requirement of 5 days a week on-site

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree in computer science, engineering, or related disciplines
• Hands-on experience deploying and using enterprise-grade AI systems, particularly generative, agentic, and/or multimodal AI systems
• Experience with one or more of the following AI security topics: AI red teaming, AI T&E, adversarial AI, AI-enhanced cybersecurity, AI strategy and governance
• Experience generating or analyzing intelligence reporting data
• Familiarity with MITRE ATLAS threat matrix
• Experience leading small to medium sized teams to solve practical technical challenges
• Active IC or DOD TS/SCI security clearance with CI Poly

Pay

Salary compensation range and midpoint: $174,000 – $217,500 – $261,000

Schedule

Work Location Type: Onsite