AI Data Analyst

Location: San Diego, CA (Hybrid – must be local) | Type: Full-time

About Navaide

Navaide partners with federal clients to deliver mission-focused solutions across financial management, ERP, and digital transformation. We bring deep domain expertise, practical execution, and a people-first culture to complex government environments.

Catalysts for a Stronger Tomorrow

At Navaide, we exist to empower organizations to evolve and adapt in a rapidly changing world. By combining human ingenuity with transformative technology, we develop innovative solutions that drive progress for the people and systems that strengthen our nation. Our mission is rooted in agility, scalability, and a commitment to exceeding expectations, ensuring impactful results for our clients and communities.

How You Will Make an Impact:

We are seeking a proactive, mid-to-senior Data Science / AI Analyst to accelerate the adoption of generative AI, intelligent agents, and process automation for a Navy enterprise IT organization in San Diego. You will partner with senior technical leadership to identify AI capability gaps, help shape a multi-year AI enablement strategy, and build working prototypes that demonstrate measurable operational value.

This is not a traditional dashboard developer role. The successful candidate is a self-starter who blends hands-on engineering with strategic advisory work, engages directly with stakeholders, and delivers results with limited oversight. The role will grow as the organization's AI maturity grows.

Key Responsibilities:

• Assess current and future AI capability gaps and develop technical papers, roadmaps, risk assessments, and actionable recommendations for leadership.
• Take in, evaluate, and prioritize proposed AI use cases, and drive the highest-value ones from concept through delivery.
• Evaluate commercial and open-source AI technologies, including large language models, agent frameworks, and automation platforms, through market research, proofs of concept, and migration planning.
• Design, build, and test AI agents, retrieval-augmented knowledge bases, and workflow automations in secure, accredited cloud and generative AI environments.
• Develop AI-enabled capabilities such as natural language querying, automated leadership summaries, document analysis, and decision-support recommendations.
• Validate AI-generated outputs against source data, business rules, and subject matter expert feedback.
• Develop the data pipelines, integrations, and data quality controls that AI solutions depend on.
• Help establish standards for AI governance, risk management, data quality, documentation, and responsible AI use so solutions can scale.
• Partner with functional subject matter experts, data owners, and field innovation teams to translate business needs into technical solutions.
• Represent the team in cross-organizational AI and data working groups.
• Deliver training and knowledge transfer that builds self-service AI and analytics capability across user communities.
• Present findings, prototypes, and recommendations to technical and non-technical audiences.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree and 5+ years of professional data science experience (mid level), or Master's degree and 10+ years (senior level), in Data Science, Data Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• U.S. citizen, eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government SECRET clearance.
• Must be local to San Diego and able to work on-site at a government facility on a regular hybrid schedule.
• Strong Python and SQL, including data pipeline development.
• Hands-on experience building LLM applications: retrieval-augmented generation, agents and tool use, prompt engineering, and output evaluation.
• Experience with Azure and/or AWS and data platforms such as Databricks.
• Understanding of data governance, data quality, access control, and responsible AI practices.
• Ability to explain technical findings in plain language to senior military and civilian leaders.
• Ability to meet DoD cyber workforce qualification requirements (DoDM 8140.03).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Active SECRET clearance.
• Experience with GenAI.mil or other DoD-accredited generative AI environments.
• Experience across frontier model platforms, such as Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and OpenAI.
• Model Context Protocol or similar agent-integration standards.
• Advana, Jupiter, or similar federal/DoD data environments.
• Microsoft Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI) or MLOps.
• Tactical edge or disconnected-environment data tooling.
• DoD Responsible AI guidance and AI test and evaluation.
• Prior Navy experience.

Location and Work Schedule

This position is hybrid and requires candidates to be local to San Diego. The schedule combines remote work days with on-site days at a government facility in San Diego, based on mission needs. Standard Monday–Friday workweek, with occasional travel to other government sites.

What We Offer

Navaide is committed to fostering a supportive, inclusive, and forward-thinking workplace where our team members can thrive. Our benefits are designed to support your well-being, professional growth, and ability to work at a sustainable pace.

• Competitive compensation (commensurate with experience)
• Comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Flexible time off
• Professional development opportunities
• Company perks such as flex spending, wellness initiatives, etc.
• 401(k) matching

About Our Culture

Navaide honors integrity, curiosity, diligence, and collaboration in everything we do. We believe in building strong relationships with our clients, communities, and teammates, united by a shared purpose of creating a stronger tomorrow. Navaide is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.

Ready to Make a Difference?

For more about us, please check out the following links:

• About Navaide
• Other Opportunities
• Employee Benefits
• Connect with us on LinkedIn!

Equal Opportunity Employer: Navaide is an EEO Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

E-Verify Participation: E-Verify Participation Poster | IER Right to Work Poster

No third parties, please.