MANTECH seeks a motivated, career and customer-oriented Senior Model Ops Engineer. This is currently a hybrid position with two days onsite in Ashburn, VA and three days remote.

In this role, you will collaborate within a cross-functional team to develop new Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) based solutions into operational pipelines to deliver mission impact for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The ideal candidate will have deep expertise and experience with predictive modeling lifecycles, hands-on experience with machine learning tools and frameworks, and a pragmatic, customer-centric approach to applying ML models to solve complex problems.

Each day CBP oversees the massive flow of people, capital, and products that enter and depart the United States via air, land, sea, and cyberspace. The volume and complexity of both physical and virtual border crossings require the application of solutions to aid officers in detecting threats while promoting efficient trade and travel.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Lead the integration and deployment of trained AI/ML models into production environments (e.g., cloud, edge devices) using ML Ops best practices.
• Develop and optimize model training & inference pipelines for real-time execution and efficiently handle large-scale data processing.
• Work with data science teams to structure automated ML model health monitoring and refresh capabilities.
• Implement continuous integration, delivery and training (CI/CD/CT) workflows with commercial and open-source modeling platforms/services.
• Coordinate with Data Science and Engineering teams to build scalable feature stores for optimal model training & execution workflows.
• Research, evaluate and recommend new tools, applications, software packages for ML Ops engineering that can be adopted and approved for use in the CBP environment.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (e.g., Software Engineering, Data Science) to integrate and test multiple candidate AI/ML models and applications for operational assessment.

Minimum Qualifications:

• HS Diploma/GED and 15-20 years of experience, AS/AA and 13-18 years, BS/BA and 7-12 years or MS/MA/MBA and 5-9 years or PhD/Doctorate and 3-7 years.
• Expertise with ML Ops tools and frameworks such as Mlflow, Kubeflow, Airflow and implementing monitoring/drift detection capabilities (e.g. Alibi, Grafana) and experience with ML platforms, such as AWS Sagemaker, DataBricks or DataRobot.
• Experience automating workflow orchestration to handle both batch and real-time streaming data processing for model inference.
• Hands-on experience productionizing models, including experience optimizing for inference speed, containerization (e.g., Docker), and with multi-cloud deployment platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Proficiency in Python, Scala and Java with strong understanding of high-performance computing and GPU acceleration.

• Hands on experience with Elastic Stack and leveraging distributed data/computing tools including Hadoop, Spark, Impala, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Solr, etc

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with ML Ops principles and tools for automated model training, testing, deployment and monitoring.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to collaborate effectively across Data Science, Data Engineering, and DevSecOps teams.
• Experience with data engineering Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) workflows across various relational/non-relational databases (Oracle/Postgres, MongoDB) and cloud endpoint services, e.g. (Lambda, GraphQL etc.).
• Experience in using deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras) and computer vision libraries (OpenCV, SimpleITK, ITKm VTK).
• Experience with biometric or image recognition algorithms and associated predictive analytics pipelines.
• Experience with GPU-based infrastructure and performance optimization.

Clearance Requirements:

• Must be a U.S. citizen with an active Top-Secret clearance with the ability to obtain and maintain CBP suitability prior to start this position.

Physical Requirements:

• The person in this position needs to occasionally move about inside the office to access file cabinets, office machinery, or to communicate with co-workers, management, and customers, which may involve delivering presentations.