Principal​/Sr Principal Engineer Software

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE:
Relocation assistance may be available.

CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START:
Yes.

CLEARANCE TYPE:
Top Secret.

TRAVEL:
Yes, 10% of the Time.

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history — from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean to stealth bombers to landing on the moon.

We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they’re making history.

Principal/Sr Principal Engineer Software (on site) in Rancho Bernardo or El Segundo, California.

Join our Research and Advanced Design (R&A&D) Division working on exciting new next generation technologies and their rapid deployment to end users.

• Engineer enterprise solutions that align with best practices to support mission critical objectives.
• Work on 1-3 mid- to large-scale projects concurrently, assigned from program and internal leadership.
• Participate in regular project design and incremental status meetings.
• Collaborate with different teams across the program to discuss, analyze or resolve usability issues and work on projects.
• Provide effective communication across multi-functional teams, stakeholders and end-users.

The individual we seek will be self-motivated, proactive, goal-oriented to help us grow our services, become even better at what we do and will possess the following qualifications.

• Principal Software Engineer:
  Bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline and 5 years of relevant engineering experience, OR Master’s degree in a STEM discipline and 3 years of relevant engineering experience, OR PhD and 1 year of experience in a related field.
• Sr Principal Software Engineer:
  Bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline and 8 years of relevant experience, OR Master’s degree in a STEM discipline and 6 years of relevant experience, OR PhD and 4 years of experience in a related field.
• Ability to transfer and maintain a final adjudicated Top Secret clearance (must be in-scope or enrolled in Continuous Evaluation) and any program access(es) required for the position within a reasonable period.
• Ability to obtain Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) and Special Program Access (SAP).
• Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP):
  Proficiency with Spring Integration or Apache Camel to build robust adapters and message routers.
• Java 21+ proficiency, microservice development and front‑end interfaces.
• Experience with observability technologies, health indicators, and dashboarding including Prometheus and Grafana.
• Experience with Apache NiFi.
• Deep knowledge of data flow technologies and networking, including UDP, TCP, and hybrid protocols.
• Hybrid S3 integration:
  Ability to develop in Java 21+ using the AWS SDK for Java v2 for scenarios where a standalone microservice is more performant than a NiFi processor.
• Dashboard development:
  • Backend:
    Java 21+/Spring Boot service with a time‑series or document‑oriented store (e.g., MongoDB or Elasticsearch) for status history.
  • Frontend:
    Proficiency in Angular, React or Vue.js to build the custom web app for status display.
  • Real‑time updates:
    Implementation of Web Sockets (via Spring Web Socket) or Server‑Sent Events (SSE) to push probed status changes to the dashboard instantly.
• Must have the ability to obtain and maintain Special Access Program (SAP) clearance.

• Active SCI and SAP security clearance.
• Java 21+ mastery: leverage Virtual Threads (Project Loom) for high‑concurrency probing and file processing tasks.
• Protocol translation: deep experience with Protobuf (Google Protocol Buffers), JAXB/Jackson for XML (UCI) processing, and JSON schema validation.
• Asynchronous…