Junior Data Scientist - Intern

ECS is seeking a Junior Data Scientist Intern to work in our Fairfax, VA office for the summer of 2026.

This internship offers a unique opportunity to move beyond the classroom and gain firsthand experience with production-grade workflows and real-world datasets. You will work alongside senior engineers and scientists to move models from research to the tactical edge, ensuring from end to end, both our warfighters & decision makers are empowered with the latest technology solutions at their fingertips.

Job Description:

This internship is ideal for someone who is passionate about analytics, machine learning, and computer vision, and eager to gain hands‑on experience working with real datasets and production‑grade workflows. You will collaborate with senior data scientists and engineers to support model development, data preparation, and research initiatives that drive meaningful business impact.

This role offers exposure to end‑to‑end data science processes, modern ML tooling, and cloud‑based development environments.

Key Responsibilities:

Data Exploration & Analysis

• Assist in collecting, cleaning, and preprocessing structured and unstructured datasets
• Perform exploratory data analysis (EDA) to identify trends, anomalies, and insights
• Create visualizations and summary reports to support decision‑making

Machine Learning Support

• Help build and evaluate machine‑learning models (classification, regression, clustering, NLP, etc.)
• Participate in feature engineering, model tuning, and performance evaluation
• Support experiment tracking and documentation of model results

Computer Vision & Image Processing

• Assist in developing and evaluating computer vision models, including image classification, object detection, and segmentation
• Support preprocessing of large‑scale image datasets (resizing, normalization, augmentation, annotation alignment)
• Help generate and manage image embeddings for similarity search, clustering, and downstream ML tasks
• Work with tools such as OpenCV, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and Hugging Face to prototype CV pipelines
• Contribute to end‑to‑end workflows for image ingestion, feature extraction, and model evaluation

What You Will Learn

• End‑to‑end data science lifecycle: data ingestion → modeling → evaluation → deployment
• Best practices in MLOps, experiment tracking, and reproducibility
• Real‑world computer vision workflows and image‑embedding pipelines
• How to work in Agile teams and contribute to production‑grade solutions
• How to communicate insights and model results to stakeholders

Benefits

• Hands‑on mentorship from experienced data scientists and ML engineers
• Exposure to real datasets and enterprise‑level tools
• Opportunity to contribute to impactful AI and analytics initiatives
• Potential for full‑time conversion based on performance

• Must be a US Citizen
• Currently pursuing a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering, or a related field
• Strong foundation in Python (Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, Scikit‑learn)
• Basic understanding of machine‑learning concepts and workflows
• Strong analytical, problem‑solving, and communication skills