Communications Systems Software Engineer

KBR, Inc. • Beavercreek, OH

1d • $115,000 - $150,000

About The Position

KBR is seeking a mid-level Communications Systems Software Engineer to develop, integrate, and evaluate communications software capabilities for contested and degraded environments. This role supports protocol emulation, SDR integration, test automation, and operationally relevant systems across research and applied DoD programs. This position requires a strong foundation in software engineering and the ability to quickly learn and reason about protocol behavior across physical, link, and logical layers. The engineer will work closely with systems engineers, reverse engineering teams, and users across cyber, electronic warfare, and analyst communities to deliver deployable tools and documented workflows.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science
• 4–7 years of professional experience developing software for technical systems
• Proficiency in C/C++ or Python
• Experience developing software on Linux-based systems
• Demonstrated ability to design and maintain clean, testable software in codebases used by multiple engineers
• Ability to understand and reason about protocol behaviors from specifications, traces, and system observations
• Experience integrating software with complex systems or external hardware
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. DoD security clearance

Nice To Haves

• Experience with communications protocols, protocol emulation, or waveform-adjacent development (PHY/L2/L3 concepts)
• Experience integrating with SDRs and RF test equipment, including multi-vendor interoperability testing
• Experience with containerization and CI/CD pipelines supporting automated testing and release workflows
• Familiarity with modeling and simulation environments for scenario generation, mission/environment injection, or lab automation
• Experience developing test plans, documenting results, and communicating technical behaviors to operational users

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain protocol emulator software processing physical, link, and logical layers for documented and proprietary protocols
• Integrate protocol emulators with multiple SDR platforms and validate interoperability against OEM implementations
• Develop and maintain user interfaces to control SDRs, configure scenarios, and visualize operational environments
• Implement test harnesses for protocol validation, fuzzing, weakness discovery, and regression testing across protocol and OEM variants
• Support end-to-end software architecture decisions to ensure the system is modular, maintainable, and deployable across multiple real-world scenarios
• Maintain engineering rigor in an R&D environment by keeping CI/CD pipelines, containers, automated tests, and build tooling healthy and usable by the team
• Read and implement technical documentation and specifications, including translating reverse engineering outputs into working implementations when needed
• Produce technical documentation for tool usage, integration, and expected behaviors to support users not familiar with protocol or hardware state machines

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees