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.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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,…