Sandia National Laboratories

Senior/Principal R&D S&E Cybersecurity - AI Systems, Onsite

Sandia National Laboratories$117K — $235K *
Aerospace & Defense
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in relevant discipline and 5+ years of relevant experience or equivalent education and experience
  • Ability to obtain and maintain a DOE Q-level security clearance

Responsibilities

  • Develop and benchmark performance of AI software and hardware components
  • Evaluate the security and reliability of AI systems
  • Create a local test environment for AI systems
  • Conduct comprehensive analyses on AI systems and document findings
  • Draft research proposals focused on AI security
  • Perform AI security research and development
  • Create AI security applications for monitoring and analysis

Benefits

  • Opportunity to work on national security challenges
  • Collaborative environment with interdisciplinary teams
  • Access to cutting-edge technology and tools
  • Support for continuous learning and professional development
  • Engagement with diverse customer needs in advanced data science
Full Job Description
What Your Job Will Be Like

We are seeking a motivated R&D S&E Cybersecurity professional to work on teams addressing some of the nation's most difficult challenges in the areas of information science, statistical analysis, cyber analytics, geospatial analytics, text analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and software and firmware engineering.

On any given day, you may be called on to:
  • Develop and conduct performance benchmarking of AI software or hardware components.
  • Evaluate the security or reliability of an AI system.
  • Develop a local test environment for an AI system and get that system up and running in the test harness.
  • Conduct open- and closed-source analysis/research on an AI system and draft a report.
  • Develop research proposals for AI security.
  • Conduct AI security research.
  • Develop AI security applications, e.g., tools to analyze and monitor the security and reliability of deployed AI.
  • Understand and address existing and emerging threats among a diverse customer set leveraging advanced data science tools and techniques.
  • Apply state-of-the-art AI/ML techniques to diverse and complex data sets and implement them on national security systems.

Applicants on this requisition may be interviewed by multiple organizations at Sandia National Laboratories.

Due to the nature of the work, the selected applicant must be able to work onsite.

Salary Range

$117,500 - $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-level security clearance. The position will likely require higher-level clearance, which may require a polygraph test.


Qualifications We Desire

The ideal R&D S&E Cybersecurity candidate for Sandia National Laboratories will in addition possess the following:
  • Graduate degree in Computer Science/Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Information Systems, Computer Forensics, Mathematics or a directly related field where an independent research project was a graduation requirement (e.g., independent project, thesis, or dissertation).
  • Experience in one or more of the following: reverse engineering, software vulnerability assessment, web application assessment, computer networking, computer architecture, compilers, or similar computer security topics.
  • Proficiency in scripting or high-level programming.
  • Familiarity with secure system design principles and information assurance principles.
  • Excellent communication skills and a demonstrated ability to develop technical ideas and results and present them in oral and written form in a concise manner.

Also, for this posting we are seeking individuals with the following experience:
  • Familiarity with AI system hardware architectures and low-level coding (C, C++, CUDA)
  • Using LLM's and agentic models.
  • Implementing and engineering AI systems.
  • Computer network engineering experience.
  • Knowledge of the AI state of the art and proven desire to keep that knowledge up to date.
  • Strong technical and people leadership skills.
  • Experience leading interdisciplinary teams and engaging internal and external stakeholders of varying responsibility.


About Our Team

In the Mission Analytics Group, we identify and collect mission needs, share them with researchers inside and outside the labs, collaborate and invest in research, integrate coherent capabilities, and partner with Sandia programs to transition successful research into mission applications. Our primary mission is to seek, pursue, and assess adversaries in different kinds of data and spaces. We also provide analytics capability to support Sandia's National Security Programs and partner broadly across Sandia to collaborate on critical programmatic opportunities where analytics are needed. We are successful when detailed capabilities provide a groundbreaking advantage to the nation through improved decisions, behaviors, and outcomes. The current strengths of this group are in computer science, software development, software engineering, applied statistics, applied mathematics, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. National security challenges require that we become specialists in cross-domain analytics addressing the phenomenal diversity of data types and decision spaces of our sponsors in a coordinated fashion. We continue to grow into this broader problem set.

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.

About Sandia National Laboratories

The Sandia National Laboratories is one of three National Nuclear Security Administration research and development laboratories in the United States, managed and operated privately by the National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia. Their primary mission is to develop, engineer, and test the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons and high technology. Headquartered on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it also has a campus in Livermore, California, next to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and a test facility in Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii. It is Sandia's mission to maintain the reliability and surety of nuclear weapon systems, conduct research and development in arms control and nonproliferation technologies, and investigate methods for the disposal of the United States' nuclear weapons program's hazardous waste. Other missions include research and development in energy and environmental programs, as well as the surety of critical national infrastructures. In addition, Sandia is home to a wide variety of research including computational biology, mathematics, materials science, alternative energy, psychology, MEMS, and cognitive science initiatives. Sandia formerly hosted ASCI Red, one of the world's fastest supercomputers until its decommission in 2006, and now hosts ASCI Red Storm, originally known as Thor's Hammer. Sandia is also home to the Z Machine. The Z Machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world and is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme temperature and pressure. It is operated by Sandia National Laboratories to gather data to aid in computer modeling of nuclear weapons. In December 2016, it was announced that National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, under the direction of Honeywell International, would take over the management of Sandia National Laboratories starting on May 1, 2017. Educational opportunities are conducted in collaboration with university students through several programs, including the Securing Top Academic Research & Talent at Historically Black Colleges and Universities Program and the Sandia University Partnerships Network.
Learn more about Sandia National Laboratories
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Founded
1948

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