Systems Software Engineer – Database Engineering & Core Services

Mantis Security Corporation•Reston, VA

6d•Onsite

About The Position

Mantis Security is seeking a software engineer with systems programming expertise and a strong background in database engineering. The role involves understanding database engines and core services internally by reading source code, examining network communications, and modifying software to support mission requirements. Engineers trace behavior through unfamiliar codebases and protocols, determine appropriate integration points for changes, and assess the effects of those changes across an integrated technology stack. The engineer develops, maintains, tests, and deploys secure, scalable applications and services; works with database engines and relational and graph data stores; and supports infrastructure automation and cloud-hosted software. The role also involves integrating identity services, implementing OpenID Connect (OIDC), applying Zero Trust Architecture principles, and collaborating with cybersecurity, infrastructure, data, and mission stakeholders. The engineer produces and maintains software designs, interface specifications, deployment procedures, configuration baselines, security implementation details, and operational support materials. This is a full-time, on-site position.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative field such as engineering or mathematics; relevant fields include Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, and Information Systems.
Typically 10 years of professional software engineering experience.
Active TS/SCI clearance and ability to obtain a Counterintelligence (CI) Polygraph.
Prior experience supporting the Intelligence Community.
Experience applying programming concepts in a professional or academic setting.
Experience applying modern software development methodologies, such as Agile, DevOps, or DevSecOps, in a professional or academic setting.
Hands-on systems programming experience in one or more of C, C++, or Rust, with ability to work across additional languages and runtimes as needed.
Experience with operating-system interfaces, process management, inter-process communication, concurrency, and multithreaded application development.
Understanding of synchronization primitives, signal handling, memory management, and resource management.
Experience developing or troubleshooting socket-based applications and client-server communications.
Experience with database engine internals, network protocol development, or comparable source-code and low-level systems analysis.
Ability to navigate unfamiliar source code, trace execution and data flows, and assess how changes affect performance, interoperability, concurrency, and security.
Experience with relational database design, SQL, query optimization, and database access controls.
Understanding of graph database concepts and their application to relationship-based data.
Experience developing infrastructure automation and deploying or supporting software in cloud environments.
Experience integrating applications with identity services using OIDC and applying authentication and authorization controls.
Understanding of Zero Trust Architecture concepts, including Policy Decision Points (PDPs), Policy Administration Points (PAPs), Policy Information Points (PIPs), and Policy Enforcement Points (PEPs).
Strong troubleshooting, technical documentation, and collaboration skills.
Agile Developer certification or Certified Scrum Developer certification.
CompTIA Security+ or higher-level cybersecurity certification.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in a quantitative field such as engineering or mathematics; relevant fields include Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, and Information Systems.
Experience with PostgreSQL and Neo4j, including database design, administration, performance optimization, and application integration.
Experience interpreting packet captures, working with binary message formats, developing protocol parsers, or modifying database clients, drivers, extensions, or engine code.
Experience using Terraform and Ansible for cloud infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and application deployment.
Experience deploying and maintaining applications and infrastructure in AWS, including AWS GovCloud, Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, and environments subject to Department of Defense Impact Level 5 requirements.
Experience with identity platforms such as PingFederate, Keycloak, Radiant Logic, SailPoint, Secret Server, or Okta; identity-provider migration and related application-code adaptation experience is especially useful.
Experience implementing Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificate lifecycle management, key management, certificate validation, and cryptographic service integrations.
Experience using PKCS #11 to integrate applications with cryptographic tokens, Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), or other secure key-storage mechanisms.
Experience implementing, evaluating, or integrating cryptographic algorithms, including Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM).
Experience with Trusted Data Format (TDF), Go-based security services, enterprise service integration, or serialization technologies such as Protocol Buffers.

Responsibilities

Develop, maintain, test, and deploy secure, scalable applications and services using languages such as C, C++, Rust, Go, Java, Python, or Node.js.
Apply systems programming principles, particularly in C, C++, and Rust, to build performant and reliable software components.
Develop software supporting process creation, monitoring, control, and inter-process communication.
Build concurrent and multithreaded applications using appropriate synchronization, signal handling, memory management, and resource-control techniques.
Design, implement, and troubleshoot networked applications using sockets, client-server architectures, and applicable network protocols.
Analyze database engine source code, communication protocols, request and response formats, serialization, and packet layouts to support development and integration.
Trace requests through database engine code to identify processing logic, integration points, and the effects of proposed modifications.
Develop relational data-storage solutions using SQL, including data modeling, query development, performance tuning, and access control.
Develop and integrate graph database solutions for relationship-based data modeling, analysis, and retrieval.
Work across relational databases, graph databases, object storage, and search/indexing engines, including PostgreSQL, Redis, RxDB, Neo4j, Amazon S3, and Elasticsearch.
Refactor and modernize existing services, including transitioning functionality from Python to other implementation languages where appropriate.
Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to provision, configure, and manage infrastructure through repeatable, version-controlled workflows.
Deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot cloud-hosted software and its compute, storage, networking, identity, and security dependencies.
Integrate applications with identity providers for authentication, authorization, federation, single sign-on, and identity-aware access control.
Implement OIDC integrations, including token validation, claims processing, client registration, redirect flows, session management, and secure API access.
Incorporate Zero Trust Architecture principles into software designs, including interactions among policy decision, administration, information, and enforcement components.
Collaborate with cybersecurity, infrastructure, data, and mission stakeholders to integrate security controls, cryptographic protections, logging, monitoring, and auditability throughout the software development lifecycle.
Produce and maintain software designs, interface specifications, deployment procedures, configuration baselines, security implementation details, and operational support materials.