Location: San Diego, CA (Hybrid - must be local) |
Type: Full-time
How You Will Make an Impact:We are seeking a proactive, mid-to-senior Data Science / AI Analyst to accelerate the adoption of generative AI, intelligent agents, and process automation for a Navy enterprise IT organization in San Diego. You will partner with senior technical leadership to identify AI capability gaps, help shape a multi-year AI enablement strategy, and build working prototypes that demonstrate measurable operational value.
This is not a traditional dashboard developer role. The successful candidate is a self-starter who blends hands-on engineering with strategic advisory work, engages directly with stakeholders, and delivers results with limited oversight. The role will grow as the organization's AI maturity grows.
Key Responsibilities:- Assess current and future AI capability gaps and develop technical papers, roadmaps, risk assessments, and actionable recommendations for leadership.
- Take in, evaluate, and prioritize proposed AI use cases, and drive the highest-value ones from concept through delivery.
- Evaluate commercial and open-source AI technologies, including large language models, agent frameworks, and automation platforms, through market research, proofs of concept, and migration planning.
- Design, build, and test AI agents, retrieval-augmented knowledge bases, and workflow automations in secure, accredited cloud and generative AI environments.
- Develop AI-enabled capabilities such as natural language querying, automated leadership summaries, document analysis, and decision-support recommendations.
- Validate AI-generated outputs against source data, business rules, and subject matter expert feedback.
- Develop the data pipelines, integrations, and data quality controls that AI solutions depend on.
- Help establish standards for AI governance, risk management, data quality, documentation, and responsible AI use so solutions can scale.
- Partner with functional subject matter experts, data owners, and field innovation teams to translate business needs into technical solutions.
- Represent the team in cross-organizational AI and data working groups.
- Deliver training and knowledge transfer that builds self-service AI and analytics capability across user communities.
- Present findings, prototypes, and recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences.
Required Qualifications:- Bachelor's degree and 5+ years of professional data science experience (mid level), or Master's degree and 10+ years (senior level), in Data Science, Data Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
- U.S. citizen, eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government SECRET clearance.
- Must be local to San Diego and able to work on-site at a government facility on a regular hybrid schedule.
- Strong Python and SQL, including data pipeline development.
- Hands-on experience building LLM applications: retrieval-augmented generation, agents and tool use, prompt engineering, and output evaluation.
- Experience with Azure and/or AWS and data platforms such as Databricks.
- Understanding of data governance, data quality, access control, and responsible AI practices.
- Ability to explain technical findings in plain language to senior military and civilian leaders.
- Ability to meet DoD cyber workforce qualification requirements (DoDM 8140.03).
Preferred Qualifications:- Active SECRET clearance.
- Experience with GenAI.mil or other DoD-accredited generative AI environments.
- Experience across frontier model platforms, such as Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and OpenAI.
- Model Context Protocol or similar agent-integration standards.
- Advana, Jupiter, or similar federal/DoD data environments.
- Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI) or MLOps.
- Tactical edge or disconnected-environment data tooling.
- DoD Responsible AI guidance and AI test and evaluation.
- Prior Navy experience.
Location and Work ScheduleThis position is hybrid and requires candidates to be local to San Diego. The schedule combines remote work days with on-site days at a government facility in San Diego, based on mission needs. Standard Monday-Friday workweek, with occasional travel to other government sites.
What We OfferNavaide is committed to fostering a supportive, inclusive, and forward-thinking workplace where our team members can thrive. Our benefits are designed to support your well-being, professional growth, and ability to work at a sustainable pace.
- Competitive compensation (commensurate with experience)
- Comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Flexible time off
- Professional development opportunities
- Company perks such as flex spending, wellness initiatives, etc.
- 401(k) matching
No third parties, please. 
