Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Public Sector

Skills this role screens for

About the role

The goal of a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Scale is to own how we apply generative AI, agentic AI, computer vision, and reinforcement learning to mission-critical problems in production. Our senior machine learning engineers are handed problems that don't yet have an established approach, they propose the architecture, build it with support from other engineers, and are accountable for whether it holds up in the environments our customers depend on.

Our Public Sector Machine Learning team is focused on deploying cutting-edge models to mission-critical government systems through products like Donovan and Thunderforge. Our work spans multiple modalities, with our primary focus on agentic systems built on large language models. We are developing agents that solve complex operational and planning challenges for government partners: agent frameworks that integrate custom retrieval pipelines and production APIs, memory and context-management systems that hold state across long-running tasks, geospatial reasoning over maps and spatial data, and the evaluation tooling that benchmarks and refines agent behavior. We also apply reinforcement learning in targeted places where it earns its keep, and our computer vision work advances evaluation, labeling efficiency, and multimodal model training in support of defense applications.

As a Senior MLE, you'll have design authority over a capability area - the final say on the patterns used within your team, and the responsibility to make those patterns work under real constraints: classified environments, limited compute, and correctness requirements that don't bend.

The work

You will

This role will require an active TS security clearance

• Own the design and delivery of agent capabilities end to end - architecture, implementation, and the evaluation that proves they work
• Define net-new patterns in problem spaces with no established approach, propose them to the wider team, and lead the work to build them
• Take state of the art models developed internally and from the community and put them into production to solve problems for our customers and taskers
• Improve and maintain production models and agents through retraining, hyperparameter tuning, and architectural updates, while preserving core performance characteristics
• Build agent-level evaluation benchmarks, LLM judges, and verifiers - and use it to hillclimb performance rather than just report on it
• Partner with product and research teams to scope and shape high-impact initiatives, including for upcoming product lines
• Build scalable machine learning infrastructure to automate and optimize our ML services
• Work directly with government users and subject-matter experts, and translate what you learn into technical direction
• Act as a force multiplier and a primary reviewer for your team, mentoring at least one engineer, and your manager's go-to on feasibility questions
• Communicate technical tradeoffs clearly to non-technical stakeholders
• Treat security and compliance as design constraints to engineer around rather than blockers to route past
• Serve as a cross-functional representative and advocate for machine learning techniques across engineering and product organizations
• Be comfortable learning new technologies quickly and managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment
• Comfortable with light travel (approximately 10%) for customer interaction and team needs

Also

Ideally You'd Have

• 5+ years of experience building and deploying applied ML systems in production environments
• Extensive experience with GenAI, Agentic AI, natural language processing, deep learning and deep reinforcement learning, or computer vision in a production environment
• A track record of owning architectural decisions and defending the tradeoffs behind them - not just implementing a design handed to you
• Experience shipping agentic systems with real production traffic and evaluation rigor, rather than prototypes or demos
• Solid background in algorithms, data structures, and object-oriented programming
• Strong programming skills in Python, experience in PyTorch or Tensorflow
• Experience mentoring or reviewing the work of other engineers

Nice to have

Nice to Haves

Compensation packages at Scale for eligible roles include base salary, equity, and benefits. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position and may be inclusive of several career levels at Scale; it will be determined during the interview process based on work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, qualifications, interview performance, and relevant education or training. Scale employees in eligible roles are also granted equity based compensation, subject to Board of Director approval. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process, and confirm whether the hired role will be eligible for equity grant. You'll also receive benefits including, but not limited to: comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage, retirement benefits, a learning and development stipend, and generous PTO. Additionally, this role may be eligible for additional benefits such as a commuter stipend.

The base salary range for this full-time position in the location of Washington DC is:

$163,200—$204,000 USD

PLEASE NOTE: Our policy requires a 90-day waiting period before reconsidering candidates for the same role. This allows us to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of all applicants.

• Graduate degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence specialization
• Experience working with cloud platforms (eg. AWS or GCP) and deploying machine learning models in cloud environments
• Experience with computer vision, generative AI models, large language models, or agentic systems
• Familiarity with ML evaluation frameworks and agentic model design
• Experience deploying ML in classified, air-gapped, or IL5+ environments
• Geospatial or GEOINT experience
• Inference optimization experience
• Fine-tuning experience: SFT, RL, or embedding models

The company

About Us

At Scale, our mission is to develop reliable AI systems for the world's most important decisions. Our products provide the high-quality data and full-stack technologies that power the world's leading models, and help enterprises and governments build, deploy, and oversee AI applications that deliver real impact. We work closely with industry leaders like Meta, Ernst & Young, Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., the Government of Qatar, and U.S. government agencies including the Army and Air Force. We are expanding our team to accelerate the development of AI applications.

We believe that everyone should be able to bring their whole selves to work, which is why we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability status, gender identity or Veteran status.

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with physical and mental disabilities. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation in the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please contact us at accommodations@scale.com. Please see the United States Department of Labor's Know Your Rights poster for additional information.

We comply with the United States Department of Labor's Pay Transparency provision.

PLEASE NOTE: We collect, retain and use personal data for our professional business purposes, including notifying you of job opportunities that may be of interest and sharing with our affiliates.…