Lead Network Systems Researcher
About the Team
STR’s Intelligence Division researches, develops, and transitions advanced analytics and machine-learning solutions for challenging national-security problems. Our team includes engineers and researchers with advanced backgrounds in engineering, computer science, mathematics, and data science who apply deep technical expertise and creativity to mission-critical challenges.
Our work spans data analysis, deep learning, and statistical methods across networking, communications, social media, text, time series, geospatial, and imagery data. We develop capabilities under constraints not typically encountered in commercial environments. U.S. Government analysts use our tools and technologies to extract, enrich, and act on intelligence information worldwide.
The Role
As a Lead Network Systems Researcher, you will lead the technical execution of advanced networking, communications, and ML-enabled systems. You will apply state-of-the-art machine-learning methods, networking expertise, and systems-engineering skills to challenges involving disparate and unlabeled data sources, real-time data communications, and networked systems.
You will work with software engineers, systems engineers, algorithm developers, researchers, and academic collaborators to develop, integrate, test, and transition mission-relevant capabilities. You will guide project technical direction, translate customer needs into executable plans, and ensure delivered systems meet high standards for quality, performance, maintainability, testability, reuse, and security.
What You Will Do:
Lead project execution: Lead technical execution of networking, communications, and ML-enabled systems projects from requirements definition through development, integration, test, demonstration, and transition
Translate mission needs into plans: Convert customer needs and mission objectives into system requirements, technical architectures, development and test plans, milestones, performance metrics, and acceptance criteria
Lead the technical team: Lead and mentor multidisciplinary teams of software engineers, systems engineers, researchers, and algorithm developers
Manage technical work: Decompose technical problems into actionable tasks; assign work, manage dependencies and risks, and track execution against program objectives
Own project architecture: Design and oversee implementation of architectures spanning network protocols, data pipelines, ML models, edge and network-core compute, and external interfaces
Drive integration and quality: Lead design reviews, code reviews, integration activities, technical demonstrations, and customer engagements; ensure delivered systems meet quality, performance, maintainability, testability, security, and reuse standards
Apply advanced methods: Apply state-of-the-art ML and statistical methods to networking, communications, and real-time data challenges in collaboration with customers, mission partners, academic collaborators, and industry partners
Who You Are:
Education and experience: PhD with 2+ years, MS with 6+ years, or BS with 8+ years of relevant experience in computer science, machine learning, computer/electrical engineering, or a related technical discipline
Clearance eligibility: Ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret security clearance for which U.S Citizenship is needed by the U.S government
Technical delivery leadership: Experience leading technical development efforts or major workstreams involving software, systems, networking, communications, machine learning, or related domains
Systems engineering: Experience translating customer or mission needs into technical requirements, system designs, development and test plans, and integrated software and/or hardware systems
ML expertise: Experience applying state-of-the-art ML methods, including unsupervised and semi-supervised learning techniques, to real-world problems across resource-constrained edge and resource-rich network-core environments
Networking expertise: Strong understanding of networking and communications theory across the OSI model
Engineering and communication practices: Working knowledge of software design patterns and engineering best practices, including integration, testing, version control, and collaboration tools such as Git, JIRA, and Confluence; strong written and verbal communication skills
Even Better:
Clearance: Active Top Secret security clearance
Collaborative software development: Experience developing software in large, multi-party code bases using collaborative engineering practices and modern developer tools, including LLM-enabled coding tools such as Cursor or Codex.
Protocol-layer development: Experience developing, integrating, testing, or evaluating software at the PHY, MAC, Network, or Application layers
Communications domain expertise: Experience with 5G system development, testing, evaluation, network management, network security, and/or protocol analysis
Customer and capture support: Experience supporting technical proposals, customer demonstrations, or capture activities with DoW or IC customers
Pay Information
Full-Time Salary Range: $180,000 - $230,000.
The salary range listed is based on external market data. Offers are based on factors, such as but not limited to, the candidate’s experience, education, training, key skills/critical skills, security clearances, and prevailing market and business conditions.