Lead AI Assurance Engineer

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Department Summary:

MITRE’s Trustworthy & Secure AI (TSAI) Department consists of a diverse team united by a passion and a sense of urgency to harness trustworthy and assured artificial intelligence (AI) to help solve problems in the public interest. The TSAI Department supports our sponsors' missions by delivering capabilities for securing and increasing trust in AI-enabled systems, including data driven AI risk awareness and mitigation, AI red teaming, and trusted tools and techniques for applying AI in high consequence environments. The TSAI Department works across government, industry, and academia to provide, assess, and shape trustworthy and secure AI systems to address complex mission needs for our sponsors. Our work provides opportunities to address real-world challenges in the rapidly developing field of AI assurance, and to research and prototype new methods to address mission needs. We are looking for highly motivated, adaptive, and self-directed candidates to perform research, development, engineering, evaluation, and integration of secure AI systems.

Roles & Responsibilities:

This position involves shaping processes and safeguards that ensure that federal AI systems are trustworthy and compliant. It is at the intersection of AI policy, risk management, assurance, and technology oversight. Specific responsibilities will include:

• Design and operationalize AI governance frameworks that align with NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and other global standards
• Partner with engineering, data science, acquisition, and legal teams to integrate governance checkpoints into the AI development lifecycle
• Support AI risk assessments and model explainability reviews for high-impact systems
• Track and interpret evolving AI regulations and help sponsors to translate them into actionable internal policies
• Develop and deliver training programs to build AI governance literacy across technical and business teams
• Collaborate with product leaders to ensure AI features meet both innovation goals and governance requirements
• Lead, mentor, and collaborate with technical staff

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of experience in artificial intelligence with a Bachelor's degree in a relevant field; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years’ experience; or equivalent combination of AI-related education and work experience.
• Advanced understanding of foundational AI/ML theory, with demonstrated ability to reason about AI system behavior, vulnerabilities, and evaluation
• Practical experience in one of the following areas:
  • AI Assurance: Developing or applying approaches to assess AI systems for security, reliability, risk, compliance, responsible use, and/or mission suitability
  • AI Strategy and Governance: Developing AI strategies, governance frameworks, policies, risk-management approaches, or implementation models that support responsible enterprise AI adoption
• Demonstrated knowledge of AI regulatory environments, including U.S. federal/state AI initiatives
• Proven ability to engage senior mission stakeholders across technical and operational domains
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to articulate challenging technical concepts and influence cross-functional stakeholders
• Active IC or DOD Secret security clearance
• Must have an active Secret U.S Government issued Security Clearance and must be eligible to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI with polygraph U.S Government issued Security Clearance. Per the U.S. Government’s eligibility requirements, you must be a U.S Citizen to be considered for a security clearance.
• This position requires a minimum of 3 days per week on-site

Preferred Qualifications:

• Advanced degree in computer science, engineering, data science, technology policy, or related disciplines
• Experience performing AI risk assessments, evaluating AI systems for policy compliance, and/or applying governance frameworks such as NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001
• Experience advising federal executives and senior government leaders on AI strategy, governance, assurance, risk, AI adoption and implementation
• Hands-on experience applying mechanistic interpretability techniques in support of AI safety research and evaluation
• Demonstrated understanding of model lifecycle management, and associated operational risks
• Experience leading large teams of 10 or more to solve complex technical challenges
• Familiarity with MITRE ATLAS threat matrix
• Active IC or DOD TS/SCI security clearance with CI Poly

This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):

Secret

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):

Top Secret/SCI/Polygraph

Salary compensation range and midpoint:

$174,000 - $217,500 - $261,000 Annual

Work Location Type:

Onsite

Commitment to Non-Discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local or international law.

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