Principal Data Scientist

Principal Data Scientist

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems has an opening for a Principal Data Scientist to join our team of qualified, diverse individuals within our Systems Engineering organization. This role is located in San Diego, CA.

In this role, you will be responsible for supporting a data analysis effort within the Sustainment Systems Engineering team on the Triton Enterprise. You'll be expected to maintain, develop, and routinely run a set of data analysis tools to help make data-driven decision making. You should also be able to assist with network updates and maintenance of the virtual machines that host the database. This role will require strong experience in ingesting, processing, storing, analyzing, and visualizing large data sets.

This position will work a 9/80 schedule, with every other Friday off.

Essential Duties:

• Data Architecture & Modeling – Design scalable data mining pipelines, establish protocols for data ingestion, cleaning, transformation, and storage. Evolve models to capture long term trends and support real time analytics.
• Statistical Insight – Perform exploratory data analysis, hypothesis testing, and advanced statistical modeling to identify key drivers and associations within heterogeneous data sources.
• Visualization & Reporting – Create interactive dashboards and reports using modern BI and visualization tools (e.g., Tableau, PowerBI, Plotly) to communicate insights to technical and non technical stakeholders.
• Cross Functional Collaboration – Partner with engineering, operations, and business units to define problem statements, translate requirements into analytical solutions, and integrate findings into product roadmaps.
• Innovation & Knowledge Leadership – Stay abreast of cutting edge data science methodologies (e.g., deep learning, reinforcement learning) and evaluate their relevance to defense contexts. Mentor teams and promote a culture of data driven decision making.
• Governance & Quality – Establish data governance standards, data quality metrics, and reproducibility practices across the analytics lifecycle.

Basic Qualifications:

• Must have a Bachelors degree in a STEM field and at least 5 years of relevant military / professional experience, OR a Master's Degree in a STEM field and at least 3 years of relevant military / professional experience, OR a PhD and at least 1 year of relevant military / professional / academic experience
• Must have an active DoD Secret or higher clearance (with a background investigation completed within the last 6 years or currently enrolled into Continuous Evaluation).
• Must have the ability to obtain and maintain Special Access Program (SAP) clearance within a reasonable time as determined by business needs.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Specific degree and focus in the Data Science field
• Demonstrated proficiency with Python, SQL, Tableau, and.DAT file decoding
• IT Management: understand security patch updates to virtual machine instances on servers hosted on central network
• Excellent communication: ability to translate complex analytics into clear, actionable insights
• Self-started in influencing cross functional teams, out-of-the-box problem solving, and driving analytical strategy
• Proven ability to influence and drive adoption of best practices across teams
• Capable of reading and understanding system architecture diagrams
• Keen interest in autonomous air vehicle platforms and its operations

Primary Level Salary Range: $125,300.00 - $187,900.00The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions.Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.