What Your Job Will Be Like

We are seeking visionary thought leaders to help shape the future of AI Credibility at Sandia and across the NNSA laboratories. Building on Sandia's long history of developing methods, frameworks, and tools for credibility in computational simulation, we will advance the state of the art in AI Credibility to enable the use of cutting-edge AI tools in our most critical national security missions. This group will address the technical foundations of AI Credibility, including evaluation, uncertainty quantification, verification and validation, robustness, interpretability, human-AI teaming, and lifecycle assurance, while advancing research frontiers in trustworthy foundation models, hybrid physics-AI systems, model robustness, and evidence-based assurance for high-consequence applications.

On any given day, you may be called on to:

• Lead and contribute to interdisciplinary technical teams conducting creative research in elements of AI modeling, development, and credibility.
• Help define research directions, technical strategy, and long-term vision for credible AI in national security and high-consequence scientific settings.
• Develop advanced research ideas that address challenging Sandia mission problems and craft those into original research proposals.
• Publish technical results in peer-reviewed venues, contribute to internal technical reports, and present findings to research, program, and leadership audiences.
• Serve as a strategic leader to develop funding opportunities, identify research directions, and grow a new team in the field of AI Credibility.
• Apply AI tools integrated with enabling credibility processes to advance Sandia's national security missions.
• Mentor junior researchers and contribute to the growth of a vibrant research community in trusted and credible AI.
• Focus areas may include, but are not limited to:
  
  • Foundations of AI Credibility, including evaluation, assurance, and trustworthiness for AI-enabled systems
  • Methods in verification, validation, uncertainty quantification, and robustness for machine learning and generative AI models
  • AI model performance under distribution shift, sparse data, rare events, and other high-consequence operating conditions
  • Interpretable, explainable, and transparent AI to support scientific understanding and defensible use of model outputs
  • Human-AI teaming, including trust calibration, uncertainty communication, and effective oversight in expert decision environments
  • Approaches to data quality, provenance, reproducibility, and traceability in AI workflows
  • Credibility of foundation and generative models, including grounding, factuality, hallucination mitigation, and evaluation of emergent behaviors
  • Physics-informed AI, hybrid modeling, and constrained learning approaches for mission-relevant applications
  • Methods for analyzing, representing, and understanding complex and large datasets, both enabling and enabled by AI
  • Benchmarks and frameworks for AI test and evaluation, assurance cases, and evidence-based model assessment

You will be part of a multidisciplinary, research- and mission-focused team developing foundational research directions in AI Credibility to support Sandia's national security and nuclear deterrence mission areas. Occasional travel may be required. If you are passionate about building a team to enable the credible use of AI in high-consequence applications, we want to hear from you.

Due to the nature of the work, the selected applicant will be required to work onsite. Relocation will be provided for those that qualify.

Salary Range

$138,600 - $235,700

*Salary range is estimated, and actual salary will be determined after consideration of the selected candidate's experience and qualifications, and application of any approved geographic salary differential.

Qualifications We Require

• A Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline and five (5) years of directly relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of directly relevant education and engineering or scientific experience that demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and ability to perform independent research and development.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DOE Q clearance.

Qualifications We Desire

The ideal R&D S&E candidate for AI Credibility Sandia National Laboratories will in addition possess the following:

• Graduate degree in a relevant computationally-intensive discipline where an independent research project was a graduation requirement (e.g., independent project, thesis, or dissertation).
• Experience in developing software and AI systems for enterprise and national security applications.
• Demonstrated software development skills and familiarity with modern software development practices.
• Proven ability to work and communicate effectively in a collaborative and interdisciplinary team environment.

Also, for this posting we are seeking individuals with the following experience:

• Experience teaming in an interdisciplinary R&D setting, including the proven ability to collaborate on cross-organizational teams and perform independent research and consulting.
• Experience paving new paths for research and development and taking steps to acquire appropriate funding and support.
  Experience conducting research and development in support of high consequence national security mission areas.
• Leadership of research in elements of AI Credibility, potentially including but not limited to the development of methods/frameworks for verification, validation, uncertainty quantification for AI, AI trust and explainability, human-machine teaming for AI, and research in methods for analyzing, assessing, and governing large datasets related to the use of AI methods.
• Command of varied communication methods, including oral presentations, preparation of high-impact visual presentations, written reports, and the ability to clearly and concisely communicate with diverse teams, sponsors, and stakeholders.

About Our Team

The AI & Data Science Research team was created to respond to the national call to develop, deliver, and deploy AI to enable and accelerate science, engineering, and discovery across the Department of Energy's mission areas. We are developing the team to represent the key capability area of AI Credibility at Sandia, harnessing a multidisciplinary group of leaders across many elements of this critical research area to advance the state of the art. Our team's mission is simple, but the research opportunities are vast: we will enable the use of AI in Sandia's high-consequence missions through the research, development, and application of credibility process methods for AI.

Posting Duration

This posting will be open for application submissions for a minimum of three (3) calendar days, including the 'posting date'. Sandia reserves the right to extend the posting date at any time.