Data Scientist
General Information
Requisition # 693
Locations USA-VA-Arlington
Posting Date 05/06/2026
Security Clearance Required - Active Public Trust
Remote Type Hybrid (Washington DC Metro)
Time Type Full time
Description & Requirements
Elder Research Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of MANTECH international Corporation seeks a motivated, career and customer-oriented Data Scientist to join our team in Arlington, VA. This is a hybrid position with several days onsite per month as needed.
You'll support a U.S. federal civilian agency that serves as the central authority on human capital across the federal workforce, helping advance strategic goals around modernizing its use of data, building a stronger analytics workforce across government, delivering trusted human-capital data products to agencies and employees, and strengthening data governance, privacy, and security.
Responsibilities include but are not limited to:
- Develop, deploy, and maintain production ML and NLP models that surface insights from large volumes of human-capital and workforce data, directly supporting decisions made by federal agencies, employees, and the public.
- Build and modernize data products and pipelines that improve data access, integration, and quality across legacy and cloud-based systems.
- Translate ambiguous policy and program questions into well-scoped analytical work, partnering with non-technical stakeholders and presenting results in ways decision-makers can act on.
- Contribute to a modern, cloud-first technology stack (Azure ecosystem) that meets federal standards for security, privacy, and governance.
- Help strengthen the client's internal data-science capability through pairing, code review, knowledge transfer, and reusable tooling.
Minimum Qualifications:
- 2–3 years of experience developing, deploying, and maintaining large-scale ML models in production using real-world data
- Bachelor’s degree in mathematics, statistics, computer science, engineering, data science, or a related quantitative field
- Hands-on experience building and evaluating NLP-based machine learning models
- Strong Python skills for developing and automating ML models and data pipelines
- Proficiency with collaborative development tools (VS Code, Git, GitHub Copilot)
- Experience working in Agile teams to iteratively develop and deliver data products
- Strong analytical, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills, including translating ambiguous requirements into actionable solutions
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience using Azure cloud products such as Azure Databricks, Azure DevOps, Azure OpenAI, and Azure AI Search.
- Experience delivering data-science work in a federal or other regulated environment, with awareness of FedRAMP, FISMA, or similar compliance regimes.
- Experience working with human-capital, workforce, survey, or other administrative-record data.
- Experience with MLOps tooling and patterns for monitoring, retraining, and governing models in production.
Clearance Requirements:
- This role requires the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Public Trust clearance. U.S. citizenship or other status meeting the federal investigative requirements is required at the time of hire.
About Elder Research, Inc - People Centered. Data Driven
Elder Research considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to disability or veteran status or any other status protected under any federal, state, or local law or regulation.
If you need a reasonable accommodation to apply for a position with Elder Research, please email us at [email protected] and provide your name and contact information.
Skills Required
- 2-3 years of experience developing, deploying, and maintaining large-scale ML models in production using real-world data
- Bachelor's degree in mathematics, statistics, computer science, engineering, data science, or a related quantitative field
- Hands-on experience building and evaluating NLP-based machine learning models
- Strong Python skills for developing and automating ML models and data pipelines
- Proficiency with collaborative development tools (VS Code, Git, GitHub Copilot)
- Experience working in Agile teams to iteratively develop and deliver data products
- Strong analytical, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills
What We Do
Elder Research is a recognized leader in data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence consulting. Founded in 1995 by Dr. John Elder, Elder Research has helped government agencies and Fortune Global 500® companies solve real-world problems in diverse industry segments. Our goal is to transform data, domain knowledge, and algorithmic innovations into world-class analytic solutions. When we combine the business domain expertise of our clients with our deep understanding of advanced analytics, we create a team that can extract actionable value from the data. Our areas of expertise include data science, text mining, data visualization, scientific software engineering, and technical teaching. Experience with diverse projects and algorithms, advanced validation techniques, and innovative model combination methods (ensembles) enables Elder Research to maximize project success for a continued return on analytics investment. In 2020 we acquired the Institute for Statistics Education at Statistics.com to provide focused data science, analytics, and statistics training for corporations and individuals. The Institute’s certificates and degrees are certified by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, and its courses are approved by the American Council on Education. Elder Research’s Analytics Services are designed to scale based on the unique requirements of each organization and can maximize the client’s return on analytic investment. Elder Research is also a leader in advanced analytic training and offers a variety of training services directed at each of the key stakeholders within an organization. Training builds a common foundation and vision for analytics across business units and lead to the successful adoption, deployment, and maintenance of analytic models within an organization.
