Senior Data Engineer, Research Delivery
Take our most complex AI security research from prototype to production, including clustering and similarity analysis at scale. You'll work across our research and engineering teams and help steer research toward what customers need.
The role
Our AI security researchers develop the methods behind Hardshell's detection and data hardening. The hardest of those methods use a lot of data and need an engineer who can turn research code into systems that run on customer data at scale. You'll own that handoff for our most complex data science components, from design through production. You'll attend both engineering standups and research syncs so work moves cleanly between the two teams.
What you'll do
- Own our most complex data science components from research prototype through production design, performance, and maintenance.
- Solve the scaling problems that come with them, such as clustering and similarity analysis across large document and embedding collections.
- Keep both teams clear on what's in progress, what's ready to ship, and what's blocked.
- Set the conventions for handing work between research and engineering, including reproducibility, testing, and documentation.
What you bring
- 7+ years building production data systems or data-heavy software, including taking research or data science code into production.
- Strong Python, plus experience with distributed data processing and with profiling and optimizing workloads too large for one machine.
- Hands-on experience with clustering, nearest-neighbor search, or embedding-based methods at scale.
- Experience with vector databases, RAG pipelines, or large-scale document processing.
- Experience prioritizing technical work against customer and product needs, ideally in a client-facing or enterprise setting.
- Clear written communication with both researchers and engineers.
- U.S. citizenship.
Nice to have
- Experience on an applied research team, such as an ML research group, a research lab, or a federally funded R&D program.
- Background in ML security, privacy, or data governance.
- Time as a technical lead on a data or ML team.
The details
- Location: Hybrid in Charlottesville, VA, or remote on Eastern Time.
- Compensation: Up to $165K base salary, plus equity and health coverage.
- Eligibility: U.S. citizenship is required for this role because of our federal work.
About Hardshell
Hardshell secures the data layer of enterprise AI. Our platform measures what an AI deployment can leak, catches extraction from AI knowledge bases as it happens, and hardens sensitive data before any model touches it. It is model-agnostic and runs in the customer's environment, so sensitive data stays where it lives.
We're a seed-stage team headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia. Our founders come from national security AI and cyber operations: our CTO spent five years advising the Department of Defense on AI security at the Joint AI Center and the CDAO, and our CEO served as an Army Cyber officer with assignments across U.S. Cyber Command and USSOCOM. We work with commercial customers in regulated industries and with federal and national security partners.
How to apply
Apply through the form on our careers page with your resume and LinkedIn profile. If more than one role fits, apply to the closest and say so in your note. Questions can go to careers@hardshell.ai.