Data Scientist
The Data Scientist role at Confidential Client involves developing and deploying AI/ML-powered systems for defense and mission-critical applications, focusing on robust, production-quality software under challenging operational conditions. The position requires collaboration across teams to research, prototype, and optimize AI models, ensuring reliability and performance in adversarial and constrained environments, with a hybrid work arrangement based in San Francisco.
About Careertakes
👉 Important disclosure: Careertakes is a third-party recruiting platform supporting this hiring process. If selected, you will be employed directly by our client, Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals.
Applicants for this role may also receive access to additional matched opportunities through the Careertakes platform.
Role Overview
Confidential Client is seeking a mission-oriented Data Scientist to design, integrate, and deploy AI/ML capabilities that power real-world products. You will work closely with product teams, software engineers, and domain experts to move research and prototypes into production. Ideal candidates have strong data science and software engineering fundamentals, a record of technical excellence, and experience with model integration, serving, and lifecycle management—especially for constrained or edge environments.
What You’ll Do
- Build applied AI and machine learning systems: model integration, inference services, evaluation pipelines, and production-facing AI features.
- Partner with product and mission teams to collect and validate data, define hypotheses, and iterate from prototype to production.
- Evaluate and improve model robustness under real-world or adversarial conditions, including GPS-denied, noisy inputs, low-connectivity, or hardware-constrained environments.
- Develop production-quality software for data acquisition pipelines, model serving, monitoring, lifecycle management, and system integration.
- Create rapid prototypes, run experiments, and iterate toward maintainable, testable production implementations.
- Improve AI system reliability through testing, benchmarking, observability, interpretability, failure analysis, and performance optimization.
- Manage work across meetings, technical discovery, implementation, experimentation, and production support.
Minimum Qualifications
- BS or MS in Computer Science, Engineering, Machine Learning, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field.
- 2+ years of professional software development experience.
- Strong Python programming skills.
- Experience building, testing, deploying, and supporting production software systems.
- Experience with AI/ML model integration, model serving infrastructure, or model lifecycle management.
- Experience with model evaluation, benchmarking, robustness testing, interpretability, or ML observability.
- Familiarity with APIs, distributed systems, containers, CI/CD, observability tooling, and edge deployment / GPU optimization.
- Excited to learn unfamiliar technical domains and work cross-functionally.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with RF signal processing (analog or digital).
- Experience with image/video processing or computer vision.
- Experience productizing ML models, LLM applications, agentic workflows, or autonomous systems.
- Experience with drone/robotics, sensor fusion, tracking, or moving-target detection systems.
- Contributions to open-source projects or other publicly visible technical work.
- Experience in aerospace, defense, critical infrastructure, robotics, or other mission-critical environments.
- Familiarity with low-latency inference, hardware-constrained systems, or degraded-connectivity deployments.
Location & Travel
- Location: San Francisco, CA — must work on-site at least 2 days per week (2–4 days preferred).
- Travel: approximately 10–20%, mostly domestic.
Compensation & Benefits
- Targeted base salary range: $150,000–$170,000 (base only; excludes bonus, equity, and benefits). This range is provided in compliance with applicable pay transparency laws and may vary based on experience, education, and skills.
- Health benefits (medical, dental, vision), 401(k) with company match, FSA/HSA options, life insurance.
- Perks may include free lunches, flexible time off, and relocation assistance (as applicable).
- Note: final offer details determined by Confidential Client and may include equity and other components.
Other Hiring Details
- Recruiting agencies: Confidential Client does not accept unsolicited resumes or outreach unless previously agreed.
- Applicants should be legally authorized to work in the U.S.; Confidential Client will consider candidates who meet employment authorization requirements.
- This posting follows all applicable U.S. hiring laws. Reasonable accommodations are available for applicants with disabilities; please contact Careertakes if you need assistance.
Equal Opportunity & Hiring Transparency
Careertakes and our client are Equal Opportunity Employers committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce. We prohibit discrimination or harassment of any kind. To support a fair and efficient hiring process, AI tools may be used to assist with application review or resume screening. These tools do not replace human decision-making. Final hiring decisions are made by people.
If you have questions about how your data is used, please contact us directly.
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