Senior Software Engineer

The MITRE Corporation•Colorado Springs, CO

13d•Hybrid

About The Position

Why choose between doing meaningful work and having a fulfilling life? At MITRE, you can have both. That's because MITRE people are committed to tackling our nation's toughest challenges—and we're committed to the long-term well-being of our employees. MITRE is different from most technology companies. We are a not-for-profit corporation chartered to work for the public interest, with no commercial conflicts to influence what we do. The R&D centers we operate for the government create lasting impact in fields as diverse as cybersecurity, healthcare, aviation, defense, and enterprise transformation. We're making a difference every day—working for a safer, healthier, and more secure nation and world. Our workplace reflects our values. We offer competitive benefits, exceptional professional development opportunities for career growth, and a culture of innovation that embraces adaptability, collaboration, technical excellence, and people in partnership. If this sounds like the choice you want to make, then choose MITRE - and make a difference with us. Department Summary: Do you want to develop software systems that contribute to solving our nation’s most critical problems? Do you want to work alongside engineers and scientists that are experts in their fields? Are you passionate about best practices for delivering the highest quality software solutions? We're making a difference every day—working for a safer, healthier, and more secure nation and world. At MITRE you will leverage your background and experience to make a difference in tangible, impactful problems that face our nation. You’ll work on diverse projects that support our Government sponsors and benefit from numerous learning and growth opportunities. Our workplace reflects our values. We want you to continue to grow your career at MITRE so that you can experience the gratifying work, our competitive benefits, exceptional professional development opportunities, and a culture of innovation that embraces flexibility, collaboration, and career growth.

Requirements

Typically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 3 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with relevant experience who can immediately contribute at this job step; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience
U.S. citizenship with eligibility for Secret clearance required
Entrepreneurial and innovative spirit and the curiosity to explore and push the boundaries of software development and software solutions
Strong Python development experience with modern software engineering practices
Experience building distributed systems in AWS or multi-cloud environments
Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (Docker, Kubernetes)
Experience implementing DevSecOps and CI/CD pipelines
Experience designing and integrating RESTful APIs and data pipelines
Familiarity with databases such as PostgreSQL or MongoDB
Experience with Linux environments and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible)
Experience with modern web technologies (React, JavaScript, HTML/CSS)
Ability to work in Agile development environments with strong documentation practices
This position requires a minimum of 50% hybrid on-site
Per the U.S. Government’s eligibility requirements, you must be a U.S Citizen to be considered for a security clearance.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree in a technical discipline (including but not limited to Software Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, etc.)
Active Secret or Top Secret clearance preferred; the applicant should be willing and able to obtain and maintain a Top Secret clearance as mission needs evolve
Experience delivering software in compliance-aligned environments and hardening systems to standards such as NIST 800-171 and/or NIST 800-53, including producing audit-ready evidence
Experience building and operating AWS data platforms (e.g., Glue, EMR) and implementing automated data quality validation and monitoring
Experience with workflow orchestration and streaming/event platforms such as Airflow and/or Kafka
Experience with cloud automation and Infrastructure as Code beyond baseline use (e.g., reusable Terraform modules, AWS CDK patterns, environment promotion strategies)
Experience with observability platforms such as Splunk, including onboarding data sources, parsing, dashboards, and alerting to support security/compliance and operational readiness
Experience supporting mission analysis, test and evaluation, operational systems, and/or integration with external mission partners or vendor solutions
Experience with simulation environments such as AFSIM
Experience administering or operating production systems (applications, databases, and/or networks), including incident response practices and reliability improvements
Experience using agentic software development tools and technologies, including Codex / ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf, or other similar models and agent-based tools

Responsibilities

Deliver modern software capabilities, improving architecture, platforms, and developer workflows with strong engineering practices (secure coding, reviews, testing, maintainable design).
Partner with UX, Architecture, Data, Security, and Operations to define technical strategy and influence roadmaps with a customer-centric mindset.
Champion architectural excellence (cloud-native, event-driven, microservices where appropriate) across AWS/Azure, balancing long-term vision with pragmatic execution.
Design and integrate backend services and RESTful APIs, ensuring reliable data flows for mission workflows and downstream consumers.
Build and operate data pipelines (ETL/ELT) for ingestion, transformation, validation, and publishing to analytics and operational APIs (including Airflow orchestration as needed).
Develop and optimize data models, SQL, and database access patterns (PostgreSQL/MongoDB), including migrations and data quality strategies.
Implement containerized deployments with Docker/Kubernetes, including configuration, deployment patterns, and troubleshooting.
Engineer DevSecOps/CI/CD pipelines with security and quality gates and repeatable release processes.
Provision and manage Linux environments using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/Ansible) for reproducible dev/test/prod deployments.
Communicate clearly via high-quality design docs/RFCs and runbooks; lead architecture reviews, incident response, post-incident learning, and compliance/observability integration (e.g., Splunk); mentor engineers and raise standards through reviews and design sessions.