Principal Software Engineer, Timing and Synchronization

Parry Labs, LLC•Alexandria, VA

13h

About The Position

At Parry Labs, you will lead software development for resilient timing and synchronization. You will apply positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) expertise to keep distributed systems synchronized when reference signals or network connections degrade. You will report to a functional software engineering manager, with technical direction from the Chief Engineer.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, applied mathematics or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
9+ years of software engineering experience, including technical leadership and delivery of timing or synchronization software.
Strong PNT or assured PNT expertise, including clock stability, drift, uncertainty, clock discipline and holdover.
Proficiency in a systems programming language such as C or C++, with experience implementing and debugging timing software.
Experience with estimation or filtering algorithms and PTP, NTP, GNSS timing or hardware timestamping.
Experience defining software interfaces, reviewing code and validating performance through automated tests and measured data.
U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance if required. An active clearance is not required at hire.

Nice To Haves

Rust experience is strongly preferred. Candidates with strong PNT expertise qualify without prior Rust experience.
Experience with embedded software, Linux or real-time operating systems.
Experience characterizing oscillators or atomic clocks, including phase error, frequency error and Allan deviation.
Experience with Python or MATLAB for timing analysis, authenticated time sources or fault-tolerant synchronization.

Responsibilities

Define timing software architecture, interfaces, error budgets and acceptance criteria with systems engineers.
Implement and validate time-source fusion, clock discipline and holdover algorithms with the software team.
Develop synchronization services with defined behavior for clock drift, conflicting sources and reference loss.
Integrate GNSS receivers, oscillators and hardware timestamping through testable software interfaces.
Measure and improve PTP and NTP performance under latency, packet loss and asymmetric network delay.
Build automated tests for timing accuracy, uncertainty and recovery under degraded conditions.
Lead design and code reviews.
Mentor engineers on timing algorithms, concurrency and numerical correctness.
Analyze timing measurements, resolve integration defects and document design decisions and verification results.