Senior Software Engineer

About

MITRE is a not‑for‑profit corporation chartered to work for the public interest. We develop software systems that address the nation’s toughest challenges in areas such as cybersecurity, healthcare, aviation, defense, and enterprise transformation. Our workplace offers competitive benefits, professional development opportunities, and a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Deliver modern software capabilities, improving architecture, platforms, and developer workflows with strong engineering practices (secure coding, reviews, testing, maintainable design).
• Partner with UX, Architecture, Data, Security, and Operations to define technical strategy and influence roadmaps with a customer‑centric mindset.
• Champion architectural excellence (cloud‑native, event‑driven, microservices where appropriate) across AWS/Azure, balancing long‑term vision with pragmatic execution.
• Design and integrate backend services and RESTful APIs, ensuring reliable data flows for mission workflows and downstream consumers.
• Build and operate data pipelines (ETL/ELT) for ingestion, transformation, validation, and publishing to analytics and operational APIs (including Airflow orchestration as needed).
• Develop and optimize data models, SQL, and database access patterns (PostgreSQL/MongoDB), including migrations and data quality strategies.
• Implement containerized deployments with Docker/Kubernetes, including configuration, deployment patterns, and troubleshooting.
• Engineer DevSecOps/CI/CD pipelines with security and quality gates and repeatable release processes.
• Provision and manage Linux environments using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/Ansible) for reproducible dev/test/prod deployments.
• Communicate clearly via high‑quality design docs/RFCs and runbooks; lead architecture reviews, incident response, post‑incident learning, and compliance/observability integration (e.g., Splunk); mentor engineers and raise standards through reviews and design sessions.

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 3 years with a Master’s degree; or a PhD with relevant experience; or equivalent combination of education and work experience.
• U.S. citizenship with eligibility for Secret clearance required.
• Entrepreneurial and innovative spirit with curiosity to explore and push software development boundaries.
• Strong Python development experience with modern software engineering practices.
• Experience building distributed systems in AWS or multi‑cloud environments.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience implementing DevSecOps and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience designing and integrating RESTful APIs and data pipelines.
• Familiarity with databases such as PostgreSQL or MongoDB.
• Experience with Linux environments and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible).
• Experience with modern web technologies (React, JavaScript, HTML/CSS).
• Ability to work in Agile development environments with strong documentation practices.
• Minimum 50 % hybrid on‑site work required.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree in a technical discipline (e.g., Software Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics).
• Active Secret or Top Secret clearance preferred; willingness to obtain and maintain Top Secret clearance as mission needs evolve.
• Experience delivering software in compliance‑aligned environments and hardening systems to NIST 800‑171 and/or NIST 800‑53 standards, including producing audit‑ready evidence.
• Experience building and operating AWS data platforms (e.g., Glue, EMR) and implementing automated data quality validation and monitoring.
• Experience with workflow orchestration and streaming/event platforms such as Airflow and/or Kafka.
• Advanced cloud automation and Infrastructure as Code expertise (reusable Terraform modules, AWS CDK patterns, environment promotion strategies).
• Experience with observability platforms such as Splunk, including onboarding data sources, parsing, dashboards, and alerting.
• Experience supporting mission analysis, test and evaluation, operational systems, and/or integration with external mission partners or vendor solutions.
• Experience with simulation environments such as AFSIM.
• Experience administering or operating production systems (applications, databases, and/or networks), including incident response and reliability improvements.
• Experience using agentic software development tools and technologies (e.g., Codex/ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf, or similar models).

Compensation

• Salary range: $129,200 – $161,500 – $193,800 annually (midpoint indicated).

Work Location

• Hybrid (minimum 50 % on‑site).