Controls Software Engineer

Company Description

Join us and make YOUR mark on the World!

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has turned bold ideas into world-changing impact advancing science and technology to strengthen U.S. security and promote global stability.

Our mission spans four critical national security areas nuclear deterrence, threat preparedness, energy security, and multi-domain defense empowering teams to take on the toughest challenges of today and tomorrow. With a culture built on innovation and operational excellence, LLNL is a place where your expertise can make a real impact.

Job Description

We have an opening for a Controls Software Engineer to design, implement, test, deploy, and commission front-end and embedded controls software for the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the largest and most energetic laser in the world. The NIF Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) is a large-scale, highly distributed, data-driven control system spanning hundreds of front-end processors, supervisory servers, framework services, and hardware interfaces.

ICCS directly controls and coordinates laser, target-area, diagnostic, sensor, and facility equipment to safely, reliably, and repeatably execute the more than two million operations required for each NIF experiment. You will work in a multidisciplinary team environment to develop ICCS applications for a unique, large-scale experimental physics facility.

This position is in the National Ignition Facility Computing (NIFC) Division within the Computing Directorate.

This position offers a hybrid schedule, blending in-person and virtual presence. You will have the flexibility to work from home one or more days per week.

This position will be filled at either the SES.
1 or SES.
2 level based on knowledge and related experience as assessed by the hiring team. Additional job responsibilities (outlined below) will be assigned if hired at the higher level.

You will

• Design, implement, test, deploy, commission, and maintain controls software used by operators to control NIF equipment, while adhering to established design and development conventions.
• Perform software engineering using object-oriented analysis, design, and programming techniques, and actively participate in design and code reviews.
• Execute the full software development lifecycle from requirements definition through implementation, manual and automated testing, deployment and commissioning.
• Apply configuration management on all development artifacts.
• Develop, analyze, and troubleshoot software that interfaces directly with hardware devices, sensor systems, diagnostics, control-system infrastructure, and vendor-provided APIs.
• Work closely with physicists, engineers, technicians, operations staff, and software team members to translate experimental, operational, and facility requirements into reliable deployed controls software.
• Deliver assigned software scope on schedule to support facility operations, commissioning activities, and program milestones.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Additional job responsibilities, at the SES.
2 level

• Independently collaborate with physicists, engineers, technicians, operations staff, and software leads to gather requirements, identify dependencies, resolve interface questions, and support deployed controls applications.
• Provide solutions to moderately complex hardware/software integration problems across distributed controls, diagnostics, timing, data acquisition, device coordination, and facility operations.
• Contribute to technical direction for assigned controls-software components, lead focused design or code review activities.

Qualifications

• Eligible to obtain and maintain a U.S. DOE Q-level security clearance, which requires U.S. citizenship.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a related field, or the equivalent combination of education and related experience.
• Experience with object-oriented design and development of multi-threaded and distributed applications in Java, C++, or comparable object-oriented languages.
• Experience implementing algorithms, control logic, or device-state models
• Skilled in all aspects of software project life cycle: requirements, design, implementation, integration, test and deployment.
• Familiarity with software configuration management tools, version control systems, and defect tracking tools (e.g., Git, Jira).
• Ability to effectively manage concurrent technical tasks with competing priorities.
• Experience applying creativity and sound technical judgment to difficult problems.
• Effective interpersonal skills necessary to interact with all levels of personnel with the ability to work independently in a multidisciplinary team environment.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills to prepare, present, and document technical information.

Additional qualifications at the SES.
2 level

• Familiarity with designing, developing, and deploying software that interfaces with a variety of hardware controls such as motors, actuators, sensors, digitizers, and…