Lead Data Scientist

Lead Data Scientist

Why choose between doing meaningful work and having a fulfilling life? At MITRE, you can have both. That's because MITRE people are committed to tackling our nation's toughest challenges—and we're committed to the long-term well-being of our employees. MITRE is different from most technology companies. We are a not-for-profit corporation chartered to work for the public interest, with no commercial conflicts to influence what we do. The R&D centers we operate for the government create lasting impact in fields as diverse as cybersecurity, healthcare, aviation, defense, and enterprise transformation. We're making a difference every day—working for a safer, healthier, and more secure nation and world. Our workplace reflects our values. We offer competitive benefits, exceptional professional development opportunities for career growth, and a culture of innovation that embraces adaptability, collaboration, technical excellence, and people in partnership. If this sounds like the choice you want to make, then choose MITRE - and make a difference with us.

We are seeking a Lead Data Scientist for MITRE's Acquisition Affordability and Business Analytics Department within the MITRE Technology and Engineering Acquisition Division. Our team partners across the FFRDC and with government partners to solve complex mission and business challenges through advanced analytics, economic modeling, and decision support capabilities. Our work spans:

• Cost Estimation and Analysis
• Investment Economics & Decision Analysis
• Strategic Business & Financial Analytics

MITRE is hiring experienced analysts to help expand and mature our business analytic and data science capability in support of a diverse set of internal and external sponsors. The work requires engagement with sponsors and multidisciplinary teams to frame analytic problems, identify and prioritize tasks, and report findings to support strategic and operational decision-making. The ideal candidate will demonstrate strong analytical thinking, intellectual curiosity, effective communication skills, and the ability to translate complex data into compelling insights that drive action and mission impact.

The role covers the full analytic lifecycle, including:

• Identifying, sourcing, integrating, and validating complex datasets
• Exploring and cleaning structured and unstructured data
• Applying statistical methods, predictive models, and analytic techniques to derive insights from data
• Interpreting findings within the context of relevant policies, regulations, budgets, and broader political or operational environments
• Translating technical analyses into meaningful conclusions and recommendations for stakeholders
• Developing analytic tools, dashboards, or reusable capabilities to support ongoing decision-making
• Delivering findings through written reports, presentations, and in-person briefings to technical and non-technical audiences

In addition to core data science activities, this position supports broader department capabilities that apply analytic rigor to sponsor problems across cost, economic, and business domains. Work may include:

• Life-cycle cost estimating
• Tradeoff and affordability analyses
• Decision analysis
• Portfolio investment analysis
• Business case analysis
• Business intelligence and performance analytics

Candidates should expect a dynamic and collaborative environment where tasks are rarely routine and often require innovative and adaptive approaches. Successful team members are comfortable working across multiple projects simultaneously, operating with limited structure or supervision, and engaging directly with sponsors to solve complex, ambiguous problems.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Identify sources of information and gather a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data to support decisions that have implications for MITRE and its government sponsors
• Select and apply analytical methods and techniques, including exploratory data analysis, time series analysis, linear regression, text analysis, and machine learning
• Draw conclusions from analyses and clearly and concisely articulate key findings in both written and verbal form
• Lead the presentation of findings to senior level stakeholders
• Recommends and develops data visualization products that improve the presentation of complex data sets and analyses
• Translate unstructured data and nontraditional sources of information into business insights
• Explore sponsor environments for cross-government challenges and identify potential best practices
• Develop investment, economic, and decision analyses, including business case analyses, cost/benefit analyses, analysis-of alternatives, and portfolio analysis
• Develop strategic business and financial analyses, including but not limited to economic studies, cost recovery strategies, budget development & planning, and affordability analysis
• Assess government and industry cost estimates and economic analyses
• Works independently with minimal guidance while proactively identifying, analyzing, and communicating significant issues, findings, risks, and opportunities to leadership and stakeholders.
• Lead small teams on tasks or small projects while training or assisting junior staff

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 6 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 3 years' experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Operations Research, Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, Finance, Data Analytics, Data Science, Systems Engineering, or other engineering or quantitative analysis field
• Expertise in python or R for data science and modeling
• Expertise in code environment management and versioning (e.g., Git, IDEs)
• Experience programmatically accessing and integrating structured and unstructured data from enterprise databases, APIs, and cloud-based data platforms
• Expert in data processing, exploratory data analysis, and work with both structured and unstructured data sources
• Expert at machine learning and natural language processing, including model tuning, computer vision, time-series analysis, and related packages (e.g., scikit-learn)
• Ability to independently identify that best statistical and/or machine learning methods for a given task
• Ability to leverage AI as a responsible augmentation to work, including judgement when to validate and tune LLM outputs
• Expertise in choosing appropriate visualizations to communicate findings utilizing data visualization approaches and software, including PowerBI, Tableau, Qlik, and visual development through leaflet, R Shiny, plotly, seaborn, ggplot, or other packages
• Expert at use of statistical methods including regressions, forecasting, and hypothesis testing
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Expertise with MS Office Suite, especially Excel, Word, and PowerPoint
• Must be eligible to obtain and maintain a Top Secret U.S Government issued Security Clearance. Per the U.S. Government's eligibility requirements, you must be a U.S Citizen to be considered for a security clearance.
• This position requires a minimum of 4 days a week on-site

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's in Economics, Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, Business, Operations Research, Data Analytics, Data Science, Systems Engineering, or other engineering field
• Expertise in additional programming languages including SQL or java
• Experience with software engineering best practices and agile devops software development processes
• Experience with econometric/economic modeling and analysis
• Working knowledge of federal budgeting and spending mechanics, processes, and data.
  • Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) and OMB Circular A-11
  • Acquisition reform and PPBE reform initiatives
  • Federal Acquisition Regulations
  • Capital Planning and Investment Control (CPIC)
  • Federal spending data, including: USASpending.gov, SAM.gov, or FPDS-NG
• Investment modeling and analysis, cost benefit analysis, experience in handling large datasets for data driven analysis, policy and investment analysis, and economic analysis in support of regulatory policy, pre- and post-implementation analysis, forecasting, and applied research
• Expertise and experience with data engineering and cloud computing (i.e., Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure)
• Cost estimating experience, including development of Independent Government Cost Estimates (IGCEs) or use of parametric cost estimating tools (PRICE, SEER SEM, etc.)
• Source selection cost evaluation experience
• ICEAA Certification or Defense Acquisition Workforce Initiative Act (DAWIA) certification desired
• Possess an active Top Secret level security clearance