Lead Data Scientist - Knowledge Retrieval

Company Description

Govini transforms Defense Acquisition from an outdated manual process to a software-driven strategic advantage for the United States. Our flagship product, Ark, supports Supply Chain, Science & Technology, Production, Sustainment, Logistics, and Modernization teams with AI-enabled Applications and best-in-class data to more rapidly imagine, develop, and field the capabilities we need. Today, the national security community and every branch of the military rely on Govini to enable faster and more informed Acquisition decisions.
Job Description

The Lead Data Scientist will provide visionary technical leadership to a team of data scientists and AI engineers, driving the end-to-end development and deployment of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence solutions for our National Security clientele. This crucial position is key to building a strong culture of advanced agentic search, deep research, retrieval, and AI, and to creating scalable AI platforms for the wider AI and Data Science community.

As a hands-on technical leader, you will apply deep expertise in Artificial Intelligence and a keen understanding of complex Defense Acquisition challenges. Your primary focus will be to work with our proprietary and commercial datasets to find critical connections, derive actionable knowledge, and identify potential issues that help our government clients make more informed decisions. This involves designing, developing, and rapidly deploying scalable AI solutions that transform these insights into mission-critical capabilities. You will also have the opportunity to expand and grow data-driven research across Govini, leading new areas to apply advanced analytics to drive strategic business and national security results. You will build and lead the development of advanced agentic search, knowledge retrieval, and deep research systems. These systems are designed to provide deep conversational knowledge explorations, robust problem solving, accurate question answering, and a suite of other search, recommendation, and discovery capabilities, transforming proprietary and commercial datasets into mission-critical insights.

To excel in this position, you must be an AI expert with a strong command of data science fundamentals and a proven ability to bring data-driven solutions to life within the defense ecosystem. The ideal candidate is a highly organized problem-solver who possesses excellent oral and written communication skills, capable of translating complex AI concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences. You must be independent, driven, and motivated to jump in and roll up your sleeves to get the job done. You lead by influence and motivation, demonstrating a passion for great work and an intolerance for mediocrity. We seek an uber-smart, creative, out-of-the-box thinker who is challenged by complex defense problems and obsessed with quality and rapid prototyping/deployment, knowing how to engage in constructive dialogue to find the best path forward
This role is a full-time position located out of our office in Pittsburgh, PA.
This role may require up to 10% travel

Scope of Responsibilities

• Drive the architecture and development of the 'Ark Brain,' a complex, multi-modal intelligent agent system for knowledge retrieval and deep research, serving as the central nervous architecture for powering agentic AI search, deep research, RAG, and knowledge graph systems across The Ark's platforms.
• Define the multi-year technical roadmap for AI initiatives, turning vague business challenges into concrete, scalable research and product goals.
• Raise the collective bar by mentoring Senior-level engineers and building high-performing teams that consistently deliver state-of-the-art (SOTA) results.
• Drive consensus across disparate groups such as DS and AI, Product, Forward Deployed AI and Engineering, to ensure AI deployments are technically sound, commercially viable, and responsible.
• Act as the authority on scientific breakthroughs and model strategy, ensuring that core architectures, training methodologies, and data ecosystems are robust, cost-effective, and future-proofed against the rapidly evolving AI landscape
• Lead the end-to-end execution of large-scale AI projects, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and timely delivery.
• Lead the development of advanced agentic search, knowledge retrieval, and deep research systems.
• Drive the expansion of data-driven research and advanced analytics for strategic business and national security results.
• Design and deploy Agentic AI systems capable of deep conversational knowledge explorations, robust problem solving, and accurate question answering from proprietary datasets.
• Act as the primary Individual Contributor (IC) and technical lead for complex AI/ML/DS projects, taking deep ownership from ideation to production deployment.
• Serve as the domain expert in AI Search Science (ranking, query understanding, agentic search, deep research, embedding models, etc), driving the application and development of state-of-the-art methods within that specialization.
• Work closely with partner teams, including AI research, data engineering, and software development, to define robust software architecture, set the project roadmap, and manage technical execution.
• Collaborate with the Product team to clearly define product scope, translating high-level requirements into actionable technical plans and delivering market-ready AI solutions integrated with client data platforms and workflows.
• Drive the development of scalable, AI-based platforms designed to support and power solutions for a diverse range of customers within the defense ecosystem.
• Champion the introduction of new AI innovations. Stay current with the rapidly evolving fields of Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models (LLMs), and agentic systems, and actively transfer this knowledge and best practices for implementation across the team.
• Mentor and guide junior and senior team members, fostering a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, and high-impact work.
• Nurture a robust AI culture within the team by leading technical discussions, conducting internal workshops, and promoting best practices in model development, experimentation, and MLOps.
• Demonstrate strong leadership qualities to align the team's AI strategy effectively with overall business and client needs, translating complex technical concepts into strategic business impacts for leadership.

Qualifications

• U.S. Citizenship is required

Required Skills:

• Minimum of 7 years of professional experience working as a Data Scientist in an industry setting
• Oversee the full lifecycle of large-scale AI projects.
• Understanding of coding AI (such as Claude Code) and experience in using it to scale up AI team deliveries
• Expertise in designing and implementing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures and complex indexing strategies for proprietary, large-scale, heterogeneous datasets. Expertise in fine-tuning multi modal embedding models
• Proven ability to leverage state-of-the-art LLMs, multi-modal embedding models, vector databases, and knowledge graph systems to build production-ready knowledge retrieval, conversational AI search, and Deep Research systems.
• Practical experience building hybrid knowledge retrieval systems that combine advanced techniques like embedding models, knowledge graphs, and traditional methods (e.g., BM25), utilizing novel paradigms such as GraphRAG, RAG-RL, and other advanced retrieval strategies.
• Deep knowledge of and practical experience with ranking and reranking models, including multi-tower, bi-encoder and cross-encoder architectures, specifically within the context of search and knowledge retrieval systems.
• Expert proficiency in developing and deploying multi-agent AI systems and reasoning frameworks (e.g., ReAct, Chain-of-Thought) for complex knowledge exploration, robust problem-solving, and decision support within search and retrieval contexts.
• Ensure timely project delivery and strategic goal alignment.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (AI Research, Data Engineering, Software Development).
• Define robust software architecture for large-scale AI systems and project roadmaps.
• Translate high-level product requirements into actionable technical plans.
• Deliver production-ready AI solutions integrated with clients' data platforms and workflows.
• Drive the implementation of scalable AI/ML platforms.
• Maintain deep expertise in cutting-edge AI, including LLMs and agentic systems. Train models, build systems based on AI innovations
• Champion innovation and best practices across the organization.
• Mentor and coach team members.
• Foster a high-performing culture of technical excellence and continuous growth.
• Help to the leadership to align AI strategy effectively with client needs.
• Create agentic AI systems, using AI orchestrators and particular AI reasoning capabilities as tools.

Desired Skills:

• A strong publication record in the top conferences in one of the AI, ML NLP, and decision science areas
• Deep knowledge of LLM and Agentic system evaluation, experience in building evaluation systems
• Experience in LLM post-training or fine-tuning.
• Demonstrate strong National Security domain knowledge.
• Experience with MLOps practices, including deployment, monitoring, and management of large-scale models in cloud environments (e.g., GCP, AWS, Azure).
• Track record of successfully transitioning AI research prototypes into robust, production-grade enterprise solutions

We firmly believe that past performance is the best indicator of future performance. If you thrive while building solutions to complex problems, are a self-starter, and are passionate about making an impact in global security, we're eager to hear from you.

Govini is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans status or any other characteristic protected by law.