Senior Data Scientist

Overview

Palitronica is seeking a Senior Data Scientist to provide technical leadership for machine learning on complex physical measurement data. Our primary challenges are classical and statistical: anomaly and novelty detection, outlier analysis, clustering, classification, and data-quality assessment.

You will join an established ML system with models already in production and a Python framework for developing, evaluating, deploying, and operating them. Your mandate is to understand that foundation deeply, improve its performance and robustness, and extend it to handle new data conditions and product needs.

This is a senior individual-contributor role. It is not primarily people management, platform engineering, or an LLM/RAG position. Python depth is important so you can assess the current framework, recommend targeted changes, review implementations, and guide software and MLOps partners. Deep learning may be used when it clearly earns its complexity, but it is not the default.

Responsibilities

• Develop a deep understanding of the existing production models, data pipelines, evaluation methods, and ML framework.
• Diagnose difficult interactions among data quality, measurement variability, drift, thresholds, and model behavior.
• Set improvement priorities and modeling direction across anomaly detection, clustering, classification, and data-quality work.
• Define and strengthen baselines, evaluation protocols, acceptance criteria, and the evidence required for production changes.
• Design solutions for sparse labels, class imbalance, threshold calibration, normal variation, and distribution shift.
• Partner with hardware and RF specialists to improve data collection, experiments, features, and interpretation.
• Lead model reviews, challenge assumptions, and distinguish meaningful anomalies from bad data or measurement artifacts.
• Assess the object-oriented Python framework, recommend focused changes, and review implementations without becoming the primary platform owner.
• Guide software and MLOps partners on interfaces, versioning, monitoring, retraining, reproducibility, and traceability.
• Mentor Data Scientists and communicate model capabilities, limitations, and risk to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Required Qualifications

• Typically, 5+ years of applied data science or machine learning experience; demonstrated depth and ownership matter more than an exact year count.
• Deep knowledge of statistics, classical machine learning, experimental design, model evaluation, and validation.
• Strong experience with anomaly detection, outlier or novelty detection, clustering, or related unsupervised and semi-supervised methods.
• A record of improving models used in operational or production settings, including careful treatment of false positives and failure modes.
• Strong Python understanding and the ability to review and improve modular, object-oriented ML code.
• Practical understanding of reproducibility, deployment, monitoring, drift, versioning, and the ML lifecycle.
• Evidence of technical leadership through direction-setting, model review, mentoring, and clear cross-functional communication.

Nice to Have

• Sensor, time-series, spectral, RF, industrial, or scientific measurement data.
• Signal processing, experimental design, weak supervision, or learning with sparse labels.
• Distribution shift, experiment tracking, model monitoring, or Azure-based ML workflows.
• Manufacturing, test and measurement, quality assurance, predictive maintenance, or cyber-physical systems.

Export Control, Controlled Goods & Security Eligibility

• This position requires direct or indirect access to hardware, software, or technical information controlled under the Canadian Export Control List, the Canadian Controlled Goods Program, the Canadian Industrial Security Program, the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), and/or the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR).
• All applicants must be eligible or able to obtain authorization for such access, including eligibility for the Canadian Controlled Goods Program, and must be able to obtain a Canadian NATO Secret clearance.

Why Join Palitronica?

• Work with cutting-edge technology at the intersection of cybersecurity, AI, and advanced electronics testing.
• Help protect critical supply chains and infrastructure.
• Join a high-growth company serving some of the world's most demanding industries.
• Collaborate with a talented and mission-driven team.
• Make a measurable impact on the company's growth trajectory.
• Palitronica is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from all qualified candidates.

Use of AI in Hiring

Palitronica may use artificial intelligence tools to assist with the screening or assessment of applicants. These tools are used strictly as an aid, and all hiring decisions are made by human reviewers.