---
title: 'Data Scientist at Black Canyon Consulting'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/data-scientist-black-canyon-consulting-bethesda-hsr3fdzkq2x4'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-21'
---

# Data Scientist at Black Canyon Consulting

- **Company:** Black Canyon Consulting
- **Location:** Bethesda, MD
- **Posted:** 2026-09-25
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-21
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/blackcanyonconsulting/jobs/8005680003

## Job description

## Overview

We are seeking a Data Scientist to support applied machine learning, natural language processing, AI evaluation, data quality, and analytical product development for a federal permitting modernization initiative.

The Data Scientist will work across structured and unstructured data, including public comments, permitting records, compliance information, documents, and geospatially linked datasets. A key focus of the role will be developing representative evaluation datasets and quantitative methods to measure the performance, reliability, and limitations of AI-enabled and agentic solutions.

This position is remote.

Duties & Responsibilities

- Develop analytical and machine-learning approaches supporting permitting and natural-resource use cases.
- Build and maintain labeled datasets, evaluation corpora, and benchmark datasets for AI-enabled services.
- Define quantitative evaluation methodologies for classification, extraction, retrieval, summarization, entity matching, and other AI/NLP capabilities.
- Evaluate LLM and agentic workflows, including output quality, retrieval performance, task completion, failure modes, and reliability.
- Analyze public-comment datasets and develop reusable features and evaluation datasets for comment-processing services.
- Apply NLP and machine-learning techniques to structured and unstructured data.
- Evaluate embedding models, semantic retrieval strategies, document-ranking techniques, and AI-generated outputs.
- Develop statistical approaches for detecting anomalies, reconciliation issues, missing data, and inconsistent records.
- Partner with Content Pipeline Engineers to measure OCR, extraction, and document-retrieval performance.
- Partner with Data Engineers to ensure analytical datasets and evaluation pipelines are reproducible and production-ready.
- Support entity matching and harmonization across data originating in multiple source systems.
- Design experiments and validation approaches with clearly defined success metrics.
- Contribute to certified analytical data products, metrics, and governed datasets.
- Develop reproducible Python analyses, models, evaluation pipelines, and technical documentation.
- Communicate model performance, limitations, uncertainty, and failure modes to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Educational Requirements

- Bachelor's degree in Data Science, Statistics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Engineering, or a related quantitative discipline.

## Requirements

- 5+ years of relevant data science, applied machine learning, or quantitative analytics experience.
- Strong Python and SQL skills.
- Experience with statistical analysis, machine learning, NLP, and unstructured text data.
- Experience designing labeled datasets, benchmark datasets, and train/test evaluation frameworks.
- Experience evaluating LLM, RAG, or agentic AI solutions, including retrieval quality, output accuracy, and failure modes.
- Strong understanding of model-evaluation techniques, including precision, recall, F1, ranking metrics, confusion matrices, and related measures.
- Experience with embeddings, semantic retrieval, or vector-based search.
- Experience developing reproducible analytical and evaluation workflows.
- Ability to distinguish data-quality issues from model-performance issues.
- Strong ability to communicate analytical results, limitations, and uncertainty.

Bonus Skills

- Experience with agent evaluation frameworks or LLM observability tools.
- Experience with agentic frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or similar orchestration frameworks.
- Experience with OpenSearch, vector databases, or enterprise search platforms.
- Experience with document AI or OCR pipelines.
- Experience with geospatial analysis.
- Experience developing entity-resolution, record-linkage, or data-quality models.
- Experience working in the U.S. Federal Government space.
- Experience with permitting, regulatory, environmental, energy, or natural-resource datasets.

## Benefits and Salary

We attract the best people in the business with our competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental and vision coverage, 401k plan with employer contribution, paid holidays, vacation, and tuition reimbursement.

If you enjoy being a part of a high performing, professional service and technology focused organization, please apply today!

## About Black Canyon Consulting

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Black Canyon Consulting (BCC) is a privately held, woman-owned small business that delivers innovative program and IT management support services to federal research and development programs.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Woman-Owned Small Business, SBA-certified WOSB)
- **Headquarters**: Fairfax, Virginia, United States
- **Founded**: 2017 [bccdc.net](https://www.bccdc.net/)
- **Founders**: Manish Salhotra (Managing Director, Co-Founder) and Haley Esser (Principal / CEO) [sba.gov](https://dsbs.sba.gov/search/dsp_profile.cfm?SAM_UEI=WB3LFMA4KM45) | [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/black-canyon-consulting-llc)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Federal IT consulting and program management support for life sciences, bioinformatics, tool development, and environmental sciences.
- **Target customers**: U.S. federal government agencies (e.g., NIH, HHS) and other R&D-focused organizations.
- **Mission/purpose**: “Integrity, Impact, Innovation” – providing agile, adaptive, customer-focused support to advance national missions. [bccdc.net](https://www.bccdc.net/)

## Products & Services
- **Program Management Support**: Strategic and tactical program oversight, administrative management, and consulting for federal R&D initiatives.
- **IT Management Support**: Custom computer programming, systems design, cloud engineering, DevOps, data engineering, AI/ML, and cybersecurity services.
- **Proprietary Technologies**: BCC leverages its own IT system tools, workflows, and a distributed network of consulting resources to deliver turn-key enterprise solutions. [bccdc.net](https://www.bccdc.net/)
- **GSA Schedule Holder**: Contract #47QTCA18D00JA, providing a streamlined procurement vehicle for federal clients. [gsaelibrary.gsa.gov](https://www.gsaelibrary.gsa.gov/ElibMain/home.do/contractorInfo.do?contractNumber=47QTCA18D00JA&contractorName=BLACK+CANYON+CONSULTING+LLC&executeQuery=YES)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly available (private company).
- **Key Metric**: Annual revenue not disclosed; total funding not applicable (bootstrapped / organic growth).
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: No external investors; key certifications include WOSB, ISO 9001:2015, ISO 20000-1:2018, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, FISMA compliance, and SOC readiness. [bccdc.net](https://www.bccdc.net/)
- **Growth Signals**: LinkedIn reports 42 employees (+75% year-over-year growth), 65 active job postings on Greenhouse, and a +50% increase in job postings monthly/quarterly. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/black-canyon-consulting-llc) | [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/blackcanyonconsulting)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Certified Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB)**: Provides set-aside contracting advantages in the federal market.
- **Deep Federal R&D Focus**: Over 125 years of combined experience in supporting NIH and other research programs.
- **Compliance & Security**: Holds multiple ISO certifications and FISMA, NIST, and PCI-DSS compliance, enabling work on sensitive government systems.
- **Agile Delivery**: Proprietary workflows and IT tools allow rapid, high-value execution for complex program needs. [bccdc.net](https://www.bccdc.net/)

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Expanding support for NIH bioinformatics, data platforms (e.g., DailyMed, RxNorm, SRA), and AI/LLM initiatives. Actively hiring for roles like AI/ML Specialist, FHIR API SME, and Platform DevEx Engineer. [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/blackcanyonconsulting)
- **Growth direction**: Continuing to secure federal contracts, growing the consulting workforce, and deepening capabilities in cloud, DevOps, and data science.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Emphasizes “Integrity, Impact, Innovation” with a collaborative, mission-driven environment focused on supporting national research priorities. [bccdc.net](https://www.bccdc.net/)
- **Work location**: Most roles are based in Bethesda, Maryland (NIH campus) or Fairfax, Virginia. Remote/hybrid policy not explicitly stated but likely on-site or hybrid given federal client requirements.
- **Notable perks**: Opportunity to work on high-impact federal R&D programs (e.g., NIH’s National Library of Medicine), professional growth in a rapidly expanding company (75% YoY headcount growth), and exposure to cutting-edge technologies (AI, cloud, bioinformatics). [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/black-canyon-consulting-llc)
- **Engineering culture**: Strong focus on software development, DevOps, data engineering, and AI/ML. Teams are organized into divisions like Software Engineering, Platform & DevOps, and Information Engineering. [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/blackcanyonconsulting)

## Sources
1. [bccdc.net](https://www.bccdc.net/)
2. [greenhouse.io](http://job-boards.greenhouse.io/blackcanyonconsulting)
3. [sba.gov](https://dsbs.sba.gov/search/dsp_profile.cfm?SAM_UEI=WB3LFMA4KM45)
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/black-canyon-consulting-llc)
5. [gsaelibrary.gsa.gov](https://www.gsaelibrary.gsa.gov/ElibMain/home.do/contractorInfo.do?contractNumber=47QTCA18D00JA&contractorName=BLACK+CANYON+CONSULTING+LLC&executeQuery=YES)

## Other roles at Black Canyon Consulting

- [User Engagement Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/user-engagement-lead-black-canyon-consulting-bethesda-j0r2y9akc0tw) — Bethesda, MD
- [Health Informatics / Terminology SME](https://feeny.ai/job/health-informatics-terminology-sme-black-canyon-consulting-bethesda-b5aqt8djsnyb) — Bethesda, MD
- [User Engagement Support Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/user-engagement-support-analyst-black-canyon-consulting-bethesda-4y9yc368rke5) — Bethesda, MD
- [Content Pipeline Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/content-pipeline-engineer-black-canyon-consulting-bethesda-jem9rt1z42nq) — Bethesda, MD
- [Account Backend Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/account-backend-engineer-black-canyon-consulting-bethesda-dnf2ty4m5ysb) — Bethesda, MD
- [Junior Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-data-scientist-black-canyon-consulting-bethesda-qvd3bjg2npje) — Bethesda, MD
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- [Mid-Level C++ Developer](https://feeny.ai/job/mid-level-c-developer-black-canyon-consulting-bethesda-a8cvj9qhehx4) — Bethesda, MD
- [Workforce Management Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/workforce-management-analyst-black-canyon-consulting-raleigh-3t1xg6xp127n) — Raleigh, NC
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