Junior Software Engineer (TS Clearance)

MartinFed•Starkville, MS

1d•Onsite

About The Position

The Junior Software Engineer provides hands-on development and engineering support to the Splunk Engineering and Maintenance team serving government agencies. Under the direction of senior Data, Platform, and Detection Engineers, the role contributes to onboarding and normalizing data sources, maintaining platform infrastructure and configurations, developing searches, dashboards, and content, and automating recurring engineering tasks through scripting and code. This is an entry-level, growth-oriented position for someone with a software development or cybersecurity foundation who will build depth in Splunk and security operations over time. The position collaborates with senior engineers, security analysts, and agency stakeholders, following established code review, testing, and change management practices. The role includes software development and automation; data engineering support; Splunk platform engineering and maintenance; content development; testing, documentation, and quality assurance; operational and customer support; and collaboration and professional development. Duties include writing scripts and small applications, assisting with log-source onboarding and data quality, maintaining Splunk infrastructure, developing SPL searches and detection content, testing and documenting changes, responding to assigned tickets, and participating in team engineering processes. The position requires U.S. citizenship and an active Top Secret Security Clearance. The work is in an inside office environment, involves extended computer use and potentially long periods sitting at a desk, and may be fast-paced with extreme deadline pressures. Employment is contingent on passing a background check before the start date and is subject to random drug screenings during employment.

Requirements

U.S. citizen with an active Top Secret Security Clearance.
Bachelor's degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Cybersecurity, or a related technical field; equivalent technical training, certifications, or demonstrable experience will be considered.
0–2 years of professional software development, IT engineering, or cybersecurity experience; internship, co-op, apprenticeship, or substantial project work is applicable.
Working proficiency in at least one programming or scripting language, such as Python, Bash, PowerShell, Java, Go, or JavaScript.
Comfort operating in a Linux command-line environment and foundational understanding of system administration concepts.
Familiarity with Git and standard development workflows, including branching, pull requests, and code review.
Ability to work with structured and semi-structured data formats such as JSON, XML, CSV, YAML, and syslog, including basic use of regular expressions.
Foundational understanding of networking and logging concepts, including TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, and authentication events, and how security-relevant events are generated across endpoint, network, and cloud environments.
Foundational cybersecurity knowledge, including core security principles, common attack patterns, and the role of a SIEM in security operations.
Willingness and demonstrated ability to learn Splunk and the Splunk Search Processing Language (SPL) quickly.
Clear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to document technical work for engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
Strong problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and ability to take direction and follow established engineering processes.
Ability to obtain and maintain the clearance and suitability requirements for the contract.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on exposure to Splunk (SPL, dashboards, universal forwarders, or apps) or another SIEM, such as Elastic, Microsoft Sentinel, QRadar, or Google SecOps.
Splunk Core Certified User or Splunk Core Certified Power User certification, or willingness to obtain one within the first year.
CompTIA Security+, Network+, or a comparable industry certification.
Experience with REST APIs, data parsing and normalization, and data pipeline concepts.
Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and their native logging services.
Exposure to configuration management or infrastructure-as-code tools such as Ansible, Terraform, or Puppet.
Exposure to CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and containerization (Docker or Kubernetes).
Familiarity with MITRE ATT&CK, detection engineering concepts, and SOC workflows.
Experience supporting a federal customer or working in an accredited environment.
Interest in growing into a Data, Platform, or Detection Engineering specialization.

Responsibilities

Write, test, and maintain scripts and small applications in languages such as Python, Bash, and PowerShell to automate recurring Splunk engineering, maintenance, and reporting tasks.
Use version control, peer code review, and established branching and deployment practices for code and configuration changes.
Assist with onboarding log sources, including configuring inputs, forwarders, parsing rules, source types, and index assignments.
Support data quality by validating field extractions, timestamps, event breaking, and Common Information Model (CIM) normalization under senior engineer guidance.
Support routine maintenance of Splunk indexers, search heads, forwarders, deployment servers, and app and patch deployments.
Monitor platform health, license usage, ingest volume, and search performance; identify anomalies and assist senior engineers with troubleshooting and remediation.
Develop and maintain SPL searches, reports, dashboards, and alerts for security, operational, and mission use cases.
Assist Detection Engineers with building, testing, documenting, and deploying detection content through established review and release workflows.
Test changes in development and test environments before production deployment and validate results against expected outcomes.
Maintain technical documentation, configuration standards, runbooks, and knowledge articles for work performed.
Respond to assigned tickets and user requests for Splunk access, search assistance, data questions, and minor configuration changes.
Provide data and platform context for incident response, audits, and after-action activities as directed.
Participate in stand-ups, sprint planning, code reviews, and change management processes with the Splunk Engineering and Maintenance team.
Work with senior engineers to translate requirements into technical tasks and progress toward Splunk certification and technical specialization.