Data Scientist / Principal Investigator

Job description

Job Title: Data Scientist / Principal Investigator Job Category: Science Time Type: Full time Minimum Clearance Required to Start: TS/SCI Employee Type: Regular Percentage of Travel Required: Up to 10% Type of Travel: Local Anticipated Posting End: 11/30/2026 CACI's is seeking a staff-level Data Scientist/Researcher to serve as a Principal Investigator and Technical Leader in our Denver, CO AI/ML Research and Integration Team. This is a hands-on role for someone who can shape ambitious research, lead teams through technical uncertainty, and turn promising prototypes into secure, scalable capabilities with measurable mission and business impact. Location: Denver, CO. Candidates outside Colorado should be willing to relocate. This is not a remote position. Eligibility: Candidates must possess an active Top Secret/SCI clearance. The Opportunity Our IRAD team researches and develops mission-focused AI and software solutions supporting Defense, National Security, Intelligence, and other customers. We work at the intersection of applied research and product delivery—identifying high-value problems, testing new approaches, building working systems, and partnering with delivery organizations to transition successful capabilities into operational use. The Principal Investigator will help define the technical direction of a portfolio that may span generative AI and large language models, retrieval-augmented generation, natural language processing, computer vision, information extraction, recommender systems, knowledge graphs, agentic systems, and MLOps. The right candidate combines scientific judgment, strong software and systems instincts, and the ability to build alignment across researchers, engineers, customers, and business leaders. Responsibilities Serve as Principal Investigator and technical lead for a portfolio of applied AI research efforts; define research questions, technical approaches, milestones, evaluation plans, risks, and transition criteria. Identify and shape new research opportunities with technical leaders, customers, business development teams, and program organizations; contribute to white papers, proposals, technical volumes, estimates, and funding briefings. Remain hands-on: design experiments, build prototypes, review code and models, troubleshoot difficult technical issues, and establish credible technical baselines. Architect end-to-end AI systems that integrate models, data pipelines, APIs, search or retrieval services, orchestration, user applications, and deployment infrastructure. Translate ambiguous mission or business needs into executable research plans and make sound build, buy, adapt, and reuse decisions under incomplete information. Lead cross-functional teams of data scientists, software engineers, platform engineers, domain experts, and user-experience practitioners; delegate effectively while maintaining accountability for technical quality and outcomes. Develop other technical staff through mentoring, design and code reviews, modeling guidance, constructive feedback, and clear engineering expectations. Drive the transition of successful prototypes into secure, maintainable, production-grade capabilities by applying modern software engineering, MLOps, CI/CD, testing, documentation, and artifact-management practices. Establish rigorous and reproducible evaluation methods, including appropriate baselines, quantitative and qualitative metrics, error analysis, operational constraints, and responsible-AI considerations. Communicate complex technical work clearly to technical and nontechnical audiences through demonstrations, reports, roadmaps, decision briefings, and customer engagements. Track relevant advances in commercial and open-source AI, assess their applicability and risk, and turn useful discoveries into reusable architectures, components, and practices for teams across the company. Qualifications Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, statistics, mathematics, engineering, or another relevant technical or quantitative discipline. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered. Minimum of 7 years of professional experience. Demonstrated experience serving as a Principal Investigator, research lead, technical lead, lead architect, or comparable role with responsibility for technical scope, team execution, risk, and outcomes. Deep practical experience applying machine learning to real-world problems, with significant depth in two or more areas such as generative AI/LLMs, NLP, computer vision, information extraction, recommender systems, graph or semantic methods, supervised or unsupervised learning, or reinforcement learning. Strong Python skills and experience with modern AI/ML libraries and frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, Hugging Face, or comparable tools. - What You Can Expect: A culture of integrity. At CACI, we place character and innovation at the center of everything we do. As a valued team member, you’ll be part of a high-performing group dedicated to our customer’s missions and driven by a higher purpose – to ensure the safety of our nation. An environment of trust. CACI values the unique contributions that every employee brings to our company and our customers - every day. You’ll have the autonomy to take the time you need through a unique flexible time off benefit and have access to robust learning resources to make your ambitions a reality. A focus on continuous growth. Together, we will advance our nation's most critical missions, build on our lengthy track record of business success, and find opportunities to break new ground — in your career and in our legacy. Pay Range : There are a host of factors that can influence final salary including, but not limited to, geographic location, Federal Government contract labor categories and contract wage rates, relevant prior work experience, specific skills and competencies, education, and certifications. Our employees value the flexibility at CACI that allows them to balance quality work and their personal lives. We offer competitive compensation, benefits and learning and development opportunities. Our broad and competitive mix of benefits options is designed to support and protect employees and their families. At CACI, you will receive comprehensive benefits such as; healthcare, wellness, financial, retirement, family support, continuing education, and time off benefits. The proposed salary range for this position is: $108,400 - 227,500 USD CACI is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected characteristic.