Principal Software Engineer - Workload Communications Domain Lead
SciTec, a Firefly Aerospace company is a dynamic non-traditional defense contractor that delivers advanced technologies in support of U.S. National Security and Defense. For the past forty-five plus years, we have supported Department of Defense customers by developing innovative remote sensing algorithms, tools, and techniques to deliver world-class data exploitation capabilities supporting missile defense; intelligence, surveillance, & reconnaissance; space domain awareness; and aircraft survivability missions.
Important Notice: SciTec exclusively works on U.S. government contracts that require U.S. citizenship for all employees. Applicants that do not meet this requirement will not be considered.
We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to serve as our Workload Communications Domain Lead. In this role, you will guide how our engineering teams design and optimize the flow of data and control between processes, services, containers, and other distributed workloads that support mission critical data processing, visualization, and operational workflows. This role is hands on and combines deep technical work with technical stewardship: you will assess how our teams communicate between workloads today, establish evidence-based recommendations, build reference implementations, and work directly with engineers to raise our organization-wide capability.
The ideal candidate has deep, production-grade expertise in distributed messaging, event streaming, and RPC systems, the ability to select communication patterns based on real workload requirements, and the communication and mentoring skills to turn that expertise into practical guidance that other engineers can adopt independently.
Responsibilities
- Assess current communication technologies, patterns, recurring problems, and capability gaps across engineering teams.
- Define evaluation criteria and use load tests and benchmarks under representative traffic and failure conditions to select and maintain a Core Collection of recommended communication technologies, patterns, and practices.
- Document recommended technologies, valid alternatives, and exceptional cases through decision guides, reference architectures, architecture decision records (ADRs), and tuning and troubleshooting guides.
- Build and maintain validated reference implementations, starter templates, and shared libraries for common communication use cases.
- Guide the choice between synchronous request/response, asynchronous messaging, event streaming, and other communication patterns.
- Establish practices for delivery guarantees, ordering, retries, deduplication, and idempotency.
- Guide backpressure, buffering, batching, flow control, and consumer concurrency design.
- Optimize throughput, latency, serialization overhead, network utilization, and memory pressure.
- Establish practices for message schemas, data contracts, and backward- and forward-compatible schema evolution.
- Guide partitioning, fan-out, replay, retention, and consumer-group design.
- Establish practices for fault handling, dead-letter processing, observability, and recovery.
- Partner with engineers through pair programming, design and code reviews, troubleshooting, and focused workshops to support consistent adoption of recommended practices.
- Collaborate with Data Storage and Deployment Environments domain leads on cross-domain problems such as consumer lag, memory pressure, distributed tracing, and end-to-end throughput and latency.
- Periodically reassess and update recommendations and documentation as technologies, workloads, and engineering needs change.
- Track adoption and engineering outcomes against established baselines and report results to engineering leadership.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, or a related technical field.
- 10+ years of professional experience designing, implementing, and troubleshooting production software systems, including significant experience with distributed communication systems.
- Deep production experience with one or more message brokers or event streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, MQTT).
- Experience with one or more RPC or low-level messaging frameworks (e.g., gRPC, ZeroMQ).
- Strong understanding of delivery semantics, ordering, idempotency, backpressure, and fault handling in distributed systems.
- Experience with serialization formats and schema evolution (e.g., Protocol Buffers, Avro, FlatBuffers, JSON Schema).
- Demonstrated ability to load test and profile communication paths, analyze results, and turn findings into actionable recommendations.
- Experience evaluating technical alternatives and clearly articulating their tradeoffs.
- Proficiency in at least one backend language such as C++, Python, Go, Rust, Java, or TypeScript/Node.js.
- Comfortable working in Linux development environments.
- Strong technical writing, mentoring, and cross-team communication skills, with the ability to influence engineering practices through technical credibility.
- Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance.
Candidates with the following qualifications will be preferred:
- Experience leading technology standardization, technical governance, or internal platform/guidance efforts across multiple teams.
- Experience with high-throughput or low-latency data pipelines, including network and memory performance tuning.
- Experience with distributed tracing and observability tooling (e.g., OpenTelemetry).
- Experience running messaging systems in containerized or Kubernetes environments.
- Familiarity with mission data workflows or sensor processing architectures.
- Active DoD Secret clearance or higher.
*Resumes, Cover Letters, and Applications which are generated by AI will not be considered for employment.
Colorado Residents: In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information
Benefits
SciTec offers a highly competitive salary and benefits package, including:
- 4% Safe Harbor 401(k) match
- 100% company paid HSA Medical insurance, with a choice of 2 buy-up options
- 80% company paid Dental insurance
- 100% company paid Vision insurance
- 100% company paid Life insurance
- 100% company paid Long-term Disability insurance
- Short-term Disability insurance
- Annual Profit-Sharing Plan
- Discretionary Performance Bonus
- Paid Parental Leave
- Generous Paid Time Off, including Holiday, Vacation, and Sick Pay
- Flexible Work Hours
The pay range for this position is $164,000 - $218,000 / year. SciTec considers several factors when extending an offer of employment, including but not limited to the role and associated responsibilities, a candidate's work experience, education/training, and key skills. This is not a guarantee of compensation.
SciTec is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. VET/Disabled.
Skills
As published by workable · 12 questions · 4 written answers
Basics
First name, Last name, Email, Phone, Address, Education, Experience, Summary, Resume, Cover letter
Short answers (1)
- How many years of professional software engineering experience do you have?
Pick from a list (7)
- This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance, including the ability to demonstrate United States citizenship and pass a background check. Are you a United States citizen?
- Do you have a Security Clearance?
- If you currently maintain a DoD security clearance, what level is your clearance?
- Do you have a Bachelor’s degree or higher from an ABET accredited school in the physical sciences, mathematics, or computer science?
- This is an onsite position in either Princeton, NJ or Boulder, CO. Are you able to work onsite in either or both of those locations?
- I authorize investigation of all statements contained in this application for employment as may be necessary in arriving at an employment decision. This application for employment shall be considered active for a period of time not to exceed 45 days. Any applicant wishing to be considered for employment beyond this time period should inquire as to whether or not applications are being accepted at that time. I hereby understand and acknowledge that, unless otherwise defined by applicable law, any employment relationship with this organization is of an "at will" nature, which means that the Employee may resign at any time and the Employer may discharge Employee at any time with or without cause. It is further understood that this "at will" employment relationship may not be changed by any written document or by conduct unless such change is specifically acknowledged in writing by an authorized executive of this organization. In the event of employment, I understand that false or misleading information given in my application or interview(s) may result in discharge. I understand, also, that I am required to abide by all rules and regulations of the employer.
- I will complete the EEO forms listed on the following page. As a Federal Contractor, SciTec is subject to reporting this information by law. Information collected in these questions is not used in any applicant’s consideration for employment.
Written answers (4)
- Reconfirm you are a United States Citizen by writing "I can confirm I am a US Citizen" below.
- Describe your professional experience designing, implementing, and troubleshooting production software systems, including distributed communication systems.
- Describe your production experience with message brokers or event streaming platforms, RPC or low-level messaging frameworks, and serialization formats and schema evolution.
- Describe your understanding of delivery semantics, ordering, idempotency, backpressure, and fault handling in distributed systems.
