Systems Software Engineer – Database Engineering & Core Services

Mantis Security Corporation•Reston, VA

4d•Onsite

About The Position

Mantis Security is seeking an experienced software engineer with systems programming expertise and a strong background in database engineering. The role focuses on understanding database engines and core services internally by reading source code, examining network communications, and modifying software to support mission requirements. The engineer will trace behavior through unfamiliar codebases and protocols, identify appropriate integration points, and assess the effects of changes across an integrated technology stack. The position develops and maintains secure, scalable applications and services; works with operating-system interfaces, processes, concurrency, networking, and database internals; and supports relational and graph data solutions, cloud deployments, infrastructure automation, and identity integrations. It also incorporates Zero Trust principles, cybersecurity controls, cryptographic protections, logging, monitoring, and auditability. The engineer produces software designs, interface specifications, deployment procedures, configuration baselines, security implementation details, and operational support materials. This is a full-time, on-site role.

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.
Typical experience: 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 the 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 PingFederate, Keycloak, Radiant Logic, SailPoint, Secret Server, or Okta; identity-provider migration and adapting application code are especially useful.
Experience implementing PKI certificate lifecycle management, key management, certificate validation, and cryptographic service integrations.
Experience using PKCS #11 to integrate applications with cryptographic tokens, HSMs, or other secure key-storage mechanisms.
Experience implementing, evaluating, or integrating cryptographic algorithms, including 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 develop 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 to provision, configure, and manage infrastructure through repeatable, version-controlled workflows.
Deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot cloud-hosted software and dependencies involving compute, storage, networking, identity, and security services.
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.