Software Engineer (Back End)

AeroVironment•Jessup, MD

About The Position

The AV PRIME program is seeking a Software Engineer 2 with strong back-end development experience—particularly in Hadoop and microservices—to join a small, high-impact software team. If taking ideas from concept to working prototype in fast, iterative cycles excites you, and you enjoy solving complex problems in distributed systems, this role will give you the opportunity to have outsized impact on how our organization operates. You will work as a hands-on engineer on a close-knit team, designing and building scalable back-end services and data-intensive systems that support mission-critical applications.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Math, or Physics is required or equivalent combination of education, training, and experience
Minimum 14 years of relevant experience in software engineering, modernization, or solution architecture
An active TS/SCI clearance with polygraph
Strong Java development skills for back-end and service-layer implementations.
Experience building and consuming RESTful services.
Hands-on experience with containers (Podman and/or Docker).
Experience with container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes.
Practical experience designing and implementing microservices architectures.
Back-end development experience with Hadoop or similar big-data processing frameworks.
Familiarity with Two or More of the Following: Processing paradigms: Machine Learning workflows, streaming data processing, and/or batch processing pipelines.
Familiarity with Two or More of the Following: Data stores: MongoDB, ArangoDB, Redis, PostgreSQL (data modeling, performance tuning, and operations).

Nice To Haves

Experience deploying and operating applications in cloud environments such as AWS or on hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).
Familiarity with observability tools (logging, metrics, tracing) for distributed systems.
Experience working in agile or iterative development environments.
Secret or Top Secret clearance, or the ability obtain a clearance is desired.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, maintain, and enhance complex back-end software systems based on documented requirements.
Implement services and data pipelines using Hadoop and related big-data technologies.
Build and evolve microservices-based architectures, including service boundaries, APIs, and inter-service communication patterns.
Utilize sound software design and development methodologies to build, integrate, and execute simulations in development and test environments.
Provide input to system and software design, including hardware/software trade-offs, software reuse strategies, and effective use of COTS/GOTS components versus new development.
Perform requirements analysis and synthesis from system level down to individual services and modules.
Implement and consume RESTful APIs to integrate back-end services with other systems and client applications.
Containerize services (e.g., Podman/Docker) and deploy them to orchestrated environments (e.g., Kubernetes).
Diagnose and resolve complex issues in distributed systems, including performance analysis, latency reduction, and scalability tuning.
Apply strong analytical troubleshooting and performance evaluation techniques across the stack.
Collaborate with team members and stakeholders to refine requirements, estimate work, and deliver incremental value.
Participate in code reviews, testing, and continuous improvement of engineering practices.
Work independently when needed, demonstrating ownership, follow-through, and clear communication.