Senior Mission​/Systems Engineer

About Nightwing

Nightwing provides technically advanced full-spectrum cyber, data operations, systems integration and intelligence mission support services to meet our customers' most demanding challenges. Our capabilities include cyber space operations, cyber defense and resiliency, vulnerability research, ubiquitous technical surveillance, data intelligence, lifecycle mission enablement, and software modernization. Nightwing brings disruptive technologies, agility, and competitive offerings to customers in the intelligence community, defense, civil, and commercial markets.

Nightwing is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer who strives for excellence and has a passion to be part of a team that strengthens our nation and improves the security of our world. Join a team at the forefront of building enterprise‑scale systems that integrate advanced hardware, software, and network architectures to empower intelligence operations. Nightwing develops trusted strategic and tactical SIGINT solutions that secure the interests of the U.S. and its partners.

Our work environment is passionate, highly collaborative, and provides engineers the freedom to strengthen and expand their skills, explore new and creative ideas, and work closely with our nation's finest service members—all while embracing integrity, innovation, and work‑life balance. With access to state‑of‑the‑art infrastructure and opportunities to lead complex integration efforts, you'll architect tomorrow's mission systems today.

This is an ONSITE position based out of our National Business Park, Maryland location.

• Work with experienced team members on system development, integration, and deployments for mission‑critical intelligence operations that protect our country.
• Design, architect, and integrate complex systems infrastructure across the full lifecycle—from requirements analysis and architecture design through integration, testing, and operational deployment.
• Lead systems integration efforts, test execution, and test results documentation for custom hardware and software systems of high complexity.
• Architect high‑availability, fault‑tolerant systems that seamlessly integrate compute, storage, networking, and security components in on‑premises and cloud environments.
• Interact with development teams, customers, end users, hardware design teams, and software design teams to resolve discrepancies, issues, and technical challenges.
• Identify, analyze, and resolve problems in all phases of the system lifecycle using strong troubleshooting and debugging skills.
• Generate briefings and present technical material to team members, customers, and Nightwing management as necessary.
• Develop and maintain comprehensive system documentation including architecture diagrams, interface control documents (ICDs), requirements, plans, procedures, and technical specifications.
• Recognize areas of improvement or customer needs and relay them to senior staff as business development possibilities.
• Perform capacity planning, performance tuning, and system optimization for large‑scale distributed environments supporting high‑volume data operations.
• Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies including AI/ML accelerators, distributed computing platforms, and high‑performance data storage solutions.
• Be an integral part of a team that makes decisions and generates ideas that will push products above and beyond.
• Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership across multi‑disciplinary teams.

• A STEM degree (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) or equivalent experience
• 5+ years of practical experience in Systems Engineering including experience with design, development, integration, and testing of custom hardware and software systems of high complexity
• Proven expertise in enterprise systems architecture, including compute infrastructure, storage systems, networking, and virtualization technologies.
• Experience with Systems Integration, test execution, and test results documentation
• Strong knowledge of Linux and/or Linux variants, including system administration, tuning, and optimization
• Experience identifying,…