Subject Matter Expert, Data Science – Defense Intelligence Senior Level (DISL)

at National Security Agency (NSA)
Published August 21, 2021
Location Fort Meade, MD
Category Default  
Job Type Full-time  

Description

The Defense Intelligence Senior-Level (DISL) employee is known for his/her technical or professional expertise, problem-solving ability, innovative research, valuable contributions to the Agency, standing in his/her technical field, influence on management, and spearheading critical technical and professional efforts. The continuous enhancement of breadth and/or depth of these skills and knowledge is essential.

THE DISL:

- Serves in an official position of DISL, regardless of his/her organizational level. DISLs are technical experts with continual achievements and accomplishments in their technical field. They solve the difficult technical problems. They are leaders in concepts or theories formulated, techniques, tradecraft, methods developed, and inventions. They continuously advance the arts and sciences, and/or the legal, fiscal, or logistical fields, and they make major contributions/improvements in management and infrastructures.
- Provides incisive technical advice to senior management, offering solutions and technical perspective, as appropriate, for decision-making. Provides authoritative technical advice and input to leadership regarding research and technical development and serves as an NSA spokesperson on technical issues. Considers Agency goals and performance strategically and guides the Agency's overall direction. Ensures that the Agency achieves its mission by developing its major programs, goals, and plans.
- Identifies the emerging strategies in the Directorates by developing relationships with key technical leaders to pull independent strategies together and facilitates leverages between mission elements, academia, and industry. Works with people and organizations outside his/her immediate organization--to include the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense at large--to defend controversial or critical long-range NSA plans.
- Leads the technical workforce, exhibiting leadership competencies and behaviors, and mentors subordinates to ensure the development of a cadre of future Senior Technical Leaders. Creates an environment that promotes employee engagement, collaboration, integration, information and knowledge sharing, and the candid, open exchange of diverse points of view.

Legendary computer scientist Dr. Alan Kay said, 'The best way to predict the future is to invent it.' Through groundbreaking research and technology transfer activities, the NSA/CSS Computer and Analytic Sciences Research Group (R6) within NSA's Research Directorate is laying the groundwork for the Agency's future analytics and platforms. To build on the Group's successful track record of scientific and mission impact, we seek a highly motivated and technically creative leader to become R6's next Data Science Subject Matter Expert (SME).

NSA's Research Directorate is a large, technically and geographically distributed organization of researchers engaged in designing and implementing analytic algorithms (and their underlying architectures, as necessary) that can curate, harvest, and put into context seemingly unrelated pieces of information from an ever-growing and diverse set of sources. Scalable computing, the capability to turn information overload to our advantage, is a core area of computer science research for NSA Research, driven by the opportunities and challenges of new analytics on large data sets. NSA Research also maintains awareness of the architectures that can operate at a scale, speed, agility, and security levels to perform big-data analytics.

The Data Science Subject Matter Expert is responsible for providing subject matter expertise and world-class research in data science to include the following:

- Serve as a subject matter expert on data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, human machine teaming, statistics, visual analytics, human subject research, and adjacent fields.
- Develop novel techniques in data science and related areas to further the Agency's capabilities and understanding of computer and analytic science. Apply these techniques to the Agency's missions, particularly those related to Information and Intelligence Analysis and Cyber Operations.
- Provide significant data science subject matter leadership and mentoring.
- Ensure that NSA' Research Directorate prioritizes work that supports exploration, discovery, situational awareness, knowledge management, authoring & sharing, 'do it yourself' analytics, compliance, and semi-automated workflow generation & execution.
- Expand collaboration with other data science subject matter experts across the Research organization, the NSA enterprise, the Intelligence Community, Department of Defense, and academia.
- Design, conduct, direct, and implement research using advanced statistical machine learning and other data science techniques within a modern, flexible computational architecture.
- Provide subject matter expertise to short-and long-term technical efforts, and lead and direct these efforts.
- Provide subject matter expertise to support conducting quantitative and qualitative controlled experiments that provide evidence to the efficacy of developed techniques.
- Cultivate collaborative internal and external relationships with research leaders across the National Security Agency and in academia, industry, national labs, military service labs, other Intelligence Community organizations, and other United States Government entities.
- Work effectively with senior leaders, research staff and external customers at all levels and operate sensitively in politically-charged situations.

Areas of potential growth include but are not limited to: advanced research into artificial intelligence and machine learning, exploration of novel computer architectures (beyond cloud computing), and applications of social and behavioral sciences to the challenge of human and intelligent-machine teaming.

SALARY RANGE: Up to $183,300

LOCATION: Emerson 3, Laurel, MD (Laurel is approximately 5-10 minutes away from Fort Meade, Maryland)

FULL/PART TIME: FULL TIME

REGULAR/TEMPORARY: REGULAR

PAY PLAN: SL

Periodic extended hours may be necessary.

International and domestic travel may be required.

The incumbent is subject to random drug and polygraph testing.

This position requires a TOP SECRET clearance and SPECIAL BACKGROUND INVESTIGATION (SBI)

The ideal candidate would have both degree and experience credentials representative of the following:

- Degree and background in STEM field
- Experience in one or more data science research areas, to include statistics, machine learning, multi-modal data analytics, behavioral and pattern analytics, graph analytics, visual analytics, and large-scale computational frameworks.
- Expertise in applied data science and machine learning
- Experience with data manipulation and processing
- Software development skills, including experience with professional programming practices and programming in distributed or streaming environments.
- Strong communications and interpersonal skills; creative, organized and results driven.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate with a customer to determine and implement innovative solutions to their problem set.
- Demonstrated ability to develop and foster partnerships with research, customer, and oversight, organizations.
- Facility in working with and briefing senior leadership.
- Possession of sound judgment in all actions and the ability to both advise and seek advice from an experienced workforce.
- Ability to make fair and sound decisions and to portray a positive, proactive, and professional attitude across all levels.
- Ability to condense and synthesize information quickly, as well as to work many actions in parallel.

TECHNICAL/PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT (30 Points)

The applicant should have a strong record of personal technical and professional achievements demonstrating innovative research, mission, and/or breakthrough successes. Candidates should be able to articulate past experience showing their expertise, competency and depth in delivering results; their problem solving ability; their ability to innovate.

TECHNICAL/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF OTHERS (30 Points)

The applicant should have a strong record of developing the skills and abilities of others in the technical workforce, especially to the next generation of experts. Key factors to be considered include:

- Mentoring and providing technical and career guidance for others. Candidates should be prepared to discuss recent individual mentoring activities, both formal and informal.
- Actively sharing technical knowledge through teaching and/or participating in technical forums.
- Effectively representing technical personnel for promotion, awards, and other forms of recognition.
- Participation on boards, committees, panels, etc., of significance to the technical community.

TECHNICAL/PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP/DECISION MAKING (20 Points)

The applicant should have a strong record of leading effective technical teams and making or influencing decisions. This individual must be fervent at pursuing creative alternatives and making sound recommendations/decisions. Key factors to be considered include:

- Demonstrated experience as a strong and credible technical leader.
- Proven track record of leading complex technical efforts to successful completion on schedule.
- Active participation in decision-making processes related to research and its technical applications.
- The ability to communicate effectively both orally and in writing.
- Demonstrated ability to introduce new technical strategies and collaborate with other technical leaders in order to influence the direction of research programs.
- The ability to communicate clearly as judged by response to interview questions is also a criterion under this category.

TECHNICAL/PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT (10 Points)

Demonstrated commitment to continuous enhancement of technical/professional skills and knowledge. Formal training and coursework, "stretch" assignments, research and writing projects, interaction with other experts, participation in conferences, training programs, and technical development fora, and similar activities will be evaluated as part of the selection process.

LEADING THE INTELLIGENCE INTERPRISE (10 Points)

Candidate should have a broad point of view of the Intelligence mission and an understanding of responsibilities in relation to the larger Intelligence Community strategic priorities. Factors to be taken into consideration include:

- Ability to build, leverage, and lead collaborative networks across organizational boundaries.
- Foster and lead improved relationships, unconventional approaches and teaming with other NSA elements, Intelligence Community collaborators and foreign partners.
- Ability to effectively promote information sharing and analytic collaboration in support of the IC mission to provide thorough analysis to the Nation's policymakers and decision makers.
- Demonstrated ability to partner with IC Agencies and DoD elements to include influence and negotiation in project, program, and resource planning; shifts in mission; or application of
technology.

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***PLEASE NOTE: U.S. Citizenship is required for all applicants. Reasonable accommodations provided to applicants with disabilities during the application and hiring process where appropriate. NSA is an equal opportunity employer and abides by applicable employment laws and regulations. All applicants and employees are subject to random drug testing in accordance with Executive Order 12564. Employment is contingent upon successful completion of a security background investigation and polygraph.

This position is a Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System (DCIPS) position in the Excepted Service under 10 U.S.C. 1601. DoD Components with DCIPS positions apply Veterans' Preference to eligible candidates as defined by Section 2108 of Title 5 USC, in accordance with the procedures provided in DoD Instruction 1400.25, Volume 2005, DCIPS Employment and Placement. If you are a veteran claiming veterans' preference, as defined by Section 2108 of Title 5 U.S.C., you may be asked to submit documents verifying your eligibility.

Please note that you may be asked a series of questions depending on the position you apply for. Your responses will be used as part of the screening process of your application and will assist in determining your eligibility for the position. Be sure to elaborate on experiences in your resume. Failure to provide the required information or providing inaccurate information will result in your application not being considered for this position. Only those applicants who meet the qualifications for the position will be contacted to begin employment processing.

Please Note: Job Posting could close earlier than the closing date due to sufficient number of applicants or position no longer available. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is part of the DoD Intelligence Community Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System (DCIPS). All positions in the NSA are in the Excepted Services under 10 United States Codes (USC) 1601 appointment authority.