Principal / Sr Principal Engineer Software

Northrop Grumman•San Diego, CA

7d•$114,000 - $213,400•Onsite

About The Position

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems Sector has an opening for a Principal/Sr Principal Engineer Software onsite in Rancho Bernardo or El Segundo, California. Join our Research and Advanced Design (R&AD) Division working on exciting new next generation technologies and their rapid deployment to end users.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) discipline from an accredited university and 5 years of relevant engineering experience OR Master’s degree in a STEM discipline from an accredited university and 3 years of relevant engineering experience; or a PhD and 1 year of experience in a related field (for Principal Software Engineer).
Bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline from an accredited university and 8 years of relevant experience OR Master’s degree in a STEM discipline from an accredited university and 6 years of relevant experience; or a PhD and 4 years of experience in a related field (for Sr Principal Software Engineer).
Ability to transfer and maintain the final adjudicated Top Secret clearance (Must be in-scope or enrolled in Continuous Evaluation) and any program access(es) required for the position within a reasonable period of time, as determined by the Company.
Ability to obtain Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) and Special Program Access (SAP).
Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP): Proficiency with Spring Integration or Apache Camel to build robust adapters and message routers.
Java 21+ Proficiency, microservice development and front-end interfaces
Experience with Observability technologies, health indicators, and dashboarding including Prometheus and Grafana
Experience with Apache Niagara Files (NiFi)
Deep knowledge of data flow technologies and networking, including UDP, TCP, and hybrid protocols
Hybrid S3 Integration: Ability to develop in Java 21+ using the AWS SDK for Java v2 for scenarios where a standalone microservice is more performant than a NiFi processor.
Dashboard Development: Backend: Java 21+/Spring Boot service with a time-series or document-oriented store (e.g., MongoDB or Elasticsearch) for status history.
Dashboard Development: Frontend: Proficiency in Angular, React or Vue.js to build the custom "web app" for status display.
Real-time Updates: Implementation of WebSockets (via Spring WebSocket) or Server-Sent Events (SSE) to push prober status changes to the dashboard instantly.
Must have the ability to obtain and maintain Special Access Program (SAP) clearance
U.S. Citizenship is required for all positions with a government clearance and certain other restricted positions.

Nice To Haves

Active SCI and SAP security clearance.
Java 21+ Mastery: Leverage Virtual Threads (Project Loom) for high-concurrency probing and file processing tasks.
Protocol Translation: Deep experience with Protobuf (Google Protocol Buffers), JAXB/Jackson for XML (UCI) processing, and JSON schema validation.
Asynchronous Messaging: Mastery of JMS (Java Message Service) specifically with ActiveMQ Classic. Candidates should understand connection pooling, message persistence, and dead-letter queue (DLQ) management.
Resiliency Patterns: Implementation of Circuit Breakers (e.g., Resilience4j) to handle "Relay" failures without cascading into the main effort.
Data Pipeline Orchestration: Advanced knowledge of Apache NiFi. Looking for ability to design custom FlowFiles, use ListS3/FetchS3, and implement complex routing logic.
Containerization: Proficiency in Docker/OCI image optimization and deploying standalone Spring Boot apps in resource-constrained environments.
Testing: Mastery of Testcontainers for local integration testing of S3 (LocalStack) and ActiveMQ brokers.
Stream Processing: Familiarity with Project Reactor or Java Streams to process large file metadata efficiently without memory overflows.
Custom Observability: Experience extending Spring Boot Actuator to expose non-standard health indicators and custom metrics via Micrometer.
Schema-Driven Monitoring: Ability to design Avro or Protobuf schemas for transmitting custom observability data to ensure cross-org compatibility.

Responsibilities

Engineer enterprise solutions that align with best practices to support mission critical objectives.
Work on 1-3 mid- to large-scale projects concurrently, assigned from program and internal leadership.
Participate in regular project design and incremental status meetings.
Collaborate with different teams across the program to discuss, analyze or resolve usability issues and work on projects.
Provide effective communication across multi-functional teams, stakeholders and end-users.