Systems Engineer - TS/SCI

Sunayu•Bethesda, MD

2d•$131,300 - $237,350•Onsite

About The Position

As a Senior Systems Engineer, you will lead an application team responsible for maintaining a continuous flow of software enhancements and deployments. You will manage risks, escalate impediments, and drive continuous process improvement. Work is primarily on-site at the client location in Bethesda, Maryland, with a flexible schedule and occasional remote work. You will provide technical direction across the team’s development efforts and oversee software engineering activities from requirements analysis and design through implementation planning, integration and testing, sustainment, documentation, deployment, and system assessment. You will lead backend systems and services architecture, contribute to technical reviews and RFCs, coordinate automated integration testing, and ensure sound engineering practices. The role includes managing and refining an Agile team backlog, supporting SAFe program increment planning and execution, leading or participating in Agile ceremonies, and working with stakeholders to prioritize high-value work. You will collaborate with other development teams, government and contractor stakeholders, and the test team; mentor engineers; and help improve scalability, reliability, performance, and team processes.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, or a related field and 12–15 years of prior relevant experience, or a master’s degree and 10–13 years of prior relevant experience; additional experience may substitute for a degree.
Must have an active Top Secret security clearance and the ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI with Polygraph.
Software development experience in languages such as Java or Python.
Experience as a Systems Engineer, Product Owner, or in a similar role on an Agile software development team.
Experience creating requirements and design documentation, including process flow diagrams.
Ability to break complex problems down into actionable steps.
Experience managing and prioritizing product backlogs.
Strong understanding of Agile methodologies and experience with tools such as GitLab, Jira, and Confluence.
Experience facilitating scrum activities, including planning, retrospectives, grooming, and reviews or demos.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills for articulating technical and non-technical concepts to diverse audiences.
Ability to work cross-functionally with engineering, design, and project management teams.
Ability to manage expectations and maintain strong relationships with government and contractor stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Kafka or other message-passing systems.
Experience with a production or enterprise system.
Cloud infrastructure experience.
Experience with Appian or other low-code software technologies.
Experience with PostgreSQL.
Containerization experience, especially with Docker.
Experience with DevOps practices and tools, including CI/CD, especially GitLab or Jenkins.
Familiarity with GraphQL.
Familiarity with Keycloak.
Proactive identification of technical debt, systemic issues, and opportunities for team or process improvement.
Expertise building and maintaining production microservices in Kubernetes.
Understanding of Elasticsearch internals, including sharding, performance tuning, analyzers, and query DSL.
Elasticsearch or other program-stack-related certifications.
Strong Kafka experience, including event design, stream processing, and performance tuning.
Familiarity with schema registries and Kafka streaming patterns.
Experience with authentication and authorization products such as Keycloak.
Experience applying security best practices for services, including authentication and authorization, secrets management, and data protection.
Experience with on-premises hardware and cloud-based deployments using Kubernetes.
Proficiency with infrastructure-as-code tools such as CloudFormation, Terraform, or Pulumi.
Experience with production or enterprise systems at scale.
Knowledge of distributed systems concepts such as idempotency and eventual consistency.
Experience leading technical projects and mentoring engineers.
Strong testing discipline focused on automation, coverage, and CI/CD pipelines.
Hands-on development or scripting experience, especially with Java and Python.
Experience with AWS cloud architecture, services, and software development.

Responsibilities

Manage, direct, coordinate, and provide technical direction for all aspects of the team’s development efforts.
Plan, design, and oversee implementation of software development solutions.
Provide technical support, coordination, and execution of systems engineering activities, including requirements analysis, design, implementation planning, integration and test, sustainment, documentation, deployment, and system assessment.
Ensure sound engineering practices are followed and provide direction on applying policies and procedures to engineering and development activities.
Develop knowledge of government business processes and provide recommendations.
Collaborate with other development teams to identify and develop high-value integrations with other systems and applications.
Develop, manage, and continually improve the Agile scrum team backlog; update and prioritize stories and epics based on stakeholder feedback.
Support SAFe program increment planning and execution by creating work tickets and program or system documentation.
Lead or participate in Agile ceremonies, including daily stand-ups, planning, reviews, and retrospectives.
Monitor increment and sprint progress and work with the team to identify and remove impediments and dependencies.
Refine the backlog by decomposing features into stories, prioritizing upcoming work, refining acceptance criteria and complexity estimates, and removing obsolete tickets.
Accept or reject completed work based on defined acceptance criteria to support high-quality software delivery.
Lead the design and architecture of backend systems and services.
Drive engineering initiatives related to scalability, reliability, and performance.
Develop requirements and design documents; contribute to and review RFCs and requirements, design, and architecture reviews.
Coordinate with the Test Team to develop and monitor automated system integration tests that identify failed modules and components.
Manage individual project priorities, deliverables, and deadlines.
Provide input to software components of system design, including hardware/software trade-offs, software reuse, COTS/GOTS use, and requirements analysis and synthesis.
Foster collaboration among team members to provide quality service and products to customers.
Mentor mid-level and junior engineers on best practices and career growth.