Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Location: McLean, VA (hybrid); occasional travel to Durham, NC and customer sites

About CoVar

CoVar is a small AI/ML R&D software company with offices in Durham, NC and McLean, VA, that uses artificial intelligence to solve problems that matter. Our teams build AI/ML solutions that help the DoD detect enemies and threats, help biomedical researchers find new cures , and help monitor machinery to prevent injuries and environmental catastrophes. We are passionate engineers dedicated to pushing the bounds of what AI/ML can do in the real world.

About the Role

We’re seeking a Senior ML Engineer (Technical Lead) with deep hands-on expertise in machine learning and computer vision, who can also lead DoD-focused programs, own customer engagement, contribute to business development, and help grow and manage a local engineering team in McLean over time. You’ll lead end-to-end technical delivery – from data to deployment – while serving as the primary technical point of contact for our customers.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys building production-grade ML systems, mentoring engineers, and translating complex technical work into compelling customer outcomes.

** What You’ll Do **

• ** Lead programs end-to-end: ** Scope requirements, set technical strategy and milestones, plan resourcing, manage risks, and deliver results for DoD-focused ML/CV projects.

• ** Own customer relationships: ** Run technical discussions, requirement discovery, demos, standing meetings, and briefings with senior stakeholders; turn feedback into clear roadmaps.

• ** Stay deeply hands-on (50 ** – ** 70%): **

• Build data pipelines, train/evaluate CV models, and write production code.

• Design, train, and optimize detection/segmentation/tracking models and custom computer-vision pipelines; handle imbalanced data, domain shift, and real-world constraints.

• Deploy models to production (typically on the edge), instrument for monitoring, and iterate with CI/CD.

• ** Contribute to business development: ** Write technical sections of proposals/white papers, help shape capture strategy, provide level-of-effort estimates, and present prototypes.

• ** Communicate and publish: ** Present results to high-level DoD and industry customers; author technical reports; publish novel work in classified/unclassified settings when applicable.

Minimum Qualifications

• ** Experience: ** 5+ years designing, building, and deploying machine learning systems in production (8+ preferred). Strong track record leading technical delivery for complex projects.

• ** ML/CV expertise : **

• Deep understanding of ML fundamentals (e.g., gradient descent, cross-validation, ROC/PR curves, confusion matrices, mAP).

• Computer vision experience with modern architectures (e.g., YOLO family, CenterNet, RetinaNet, Detectron2, ViTs, segmentation networks), augmentation strategies, and evaluation.

• Experience with data curation/annotation workflows and dataset quality control.

• ** Software engineering: ** Python (NumPy, scipy, pandas/polars), PyTorch (preferred) or TensorFlow, git, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and code quality practices.

• ** MLOps & deployment: ** Experiment tracking, Docker, ONNX/TensorRT, deploying inference services to the edge (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson).

• ** Communication & leadership: ** Excellent technical communication, customer-facing experience, and proven ability to lead cross-functional efforts.

• ** Education: ** B.S. in engineering, math, computer science, or related field; M.S./Ph.D. preferred.

• ** Clearance: ** Eligibility for U.S. security clearance. This requires U.S. citizenship.

** Preferred Qualifications (Bonus) **

• Prior ** Department of Defense ** project experience, including briefing senior stakeholders and navigating DoD acquisition processes.
• Active ** Secret ** or ** TS/SCI ** clearance; experience working in classified environments.
• Experience managing or mentoring engineers; contributing to hiring and performance development.
• Experience with proposal writing (SBIR/STTR, RFPs), technical volume authorship, and live demos.
• Experience with multi-sensor fusion, signal-processing, tracking, synthetic data generation, domain adaptation, or semi/active learning for data-limited environments.
• Familiarity with edge hardware optimization, and performance profiling.
• Open-source contributions, publications, or patents in ML/CV.

** Why This Role Matters **

You’ll be a key technical leader in our McLean office – setting technical direction, building a local team, and ensuring our DoD partners see tangible mission impact from AI/ML solutions. If you thrive in high-impact environments where you can both build and lead , we’d love to talk.

Benefits

• Competitive salary, cash bonus, equity structure, and 401k with employer contributions
• Excellent health care coverage, including dental and vision plans
• Parental leave
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Life insurance
• Flexible work schedule
• Tuition support
• PTO and paid holidays

Visit us: www.covar.com