Lead Software Engineer; Intelligence Center Security Clearance

Position: Lead Software Engineer (Intelligence Center) with Security Clearance
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. The MITRE Corporation's National Space Program operates at the intersection of technological innovation and deep domain expertise. Our mission is to engineer end-to-end solutions for organizations developing, deploying, and operating next-generation space capabilities. By leveraging systems engineering, advanced analytics, and cross-cutting research, we mitigate risk and accelerate modernization across the entire space life cycle.

Ultimately, the National Space Program serves as a foundation for global mission assurance. By reinforcing the digital and physical infrastructure underpinning space superiority, we empower operators to execute their objectives with absolute confidence-ensuring the success of critical national security, civil, and defense missions.

Roles & 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 Dev Sec Ops /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.

Basic Qualifications:

* Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 6 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with 3 years' experience or equivalent combination of related education and work experience. The individual should be able to immediately contribute to this job step

* 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 Dev Sec Ops  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

* Active TS/SCI clearance with a polygraph

* U.S. Citizenship required

* This position has an on-site requirement of 5 days a week on-site

Preferred Qualifications:

* Advanced degree in a technical discipline (including but not limited to Software Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, etc.)

* 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…