Principal Data Scientist

About the role

Northrop Grumman is seeking a Principal Data Scientist to support a data analysis effort within the Sustainment Systems Engineering team on the Triton Enterprise. The role is located in San Diego, CA and requires a 9/80 schedule with every other Friday off.

Responsibilities

• Data Architecture & Modeling – Design scalable data mining pipelines, establish protocols for data ingestion, cleaning, transformation, and storage.
• Evolve models to capture long term trends and support real time analytics.
• Statistical Insight – Perform exploratory data analysis, hypothesis testing, and advanced statistical modeling to identify key drivers and associations within heterogeneous data sources.
• Create interactive dashboards and reports using modern BI and visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, PowerBI, Plotly) to communicate insights to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Partner with engineering, operations, and business units to define problem statements, translate requirements into analytical solutions, and integrate findings into product roadmaps.
• Innovation & Knowledge Leadership – Stay abreast of cutting edge data science methodologies (e.g., deep learning, reinforcement learning) and evaluate their relevance to defense contexts. Mentor teams and promote a culture of data driven decision making.
• Governance & Quality – Establish data governance standards, data quality metrics, and reproducibility practices across the analytics lifecycle.

Requirements

• Must have a Bachelors degree in a STEM field and at least 5 years of relevant military / professional experience, OR a Master's Degree in a STEM field and at least 3 years of relevant military / professional experience, OR a PhD and at least 1 year of relevant military / professional / academic experience.
• Must have an active DoD Secret or higher clearance (with a background investigation completed within the last 6 years or currently enrolled into Continuous Evaluation).
• Must have the ability to obtain and maintain Special Access Program (SAP) clearance within a reasonable time as determined by business needs.

Qualifications

• Specific degree and focus in the Data Science field.
• Demonstrated proficiency with Python, SQL, Tableau, and .DAT file decoding.
• Excellent communication: ability to translate complex analytics into clear, actionable insights.
• Self-started in influencing cross functional teams, out-of-the-box problem solving, and driving analytical strategy.
• Proven ability to influence and drive adoption of best practices across teams.
• Capable of reading and understanding system architecture diagrams.
• Keen interest in autonomous air vehicle platforms and its operations.

Skills

• Strong experience in ingesting, processing, storing, analyzing, and visualizing large data sets.

Benefits

• Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results.
• Discretionary bonuses in addition to base pay.
• Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.

Pay

The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions. Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay.

Schedule

This role will work a 9/80 schedule, with every other Friday off.