Senior Database Engineer

acu Cyber is seeking a Senior Database Engineer with systems programming expertise and a strong background in database engineering. This role focuses on understanding how database engines and core services work internally, reading source code, examining network communications, and modifying software to support mission requirements.

Candidates should be able to move beyond queries, schemas, and application interfaces to understand how a database processes requests, exchanges data, and interacts with other components. The work involves tracing behavior through unfamiliar codebases and protocols, identifying where changes belong, and understanding their effects across an integrated technology stack.

This role is full-time on Government site, based in the National Capital Region.

• Develop, maintain, test, and deploy secure, scalable applications and services using C, C++, Rust, Go, Java, Python, or Node.js.
• Apply systems programming principles, particularly in C, C++, and Rust, to develop performant and reliable software components.
• Develop software supporting process creation, monitoring, control, and inter-process communication.
• Build concurrent and multithreaded applications using appropriate synchronization, signal handling, memory management, and resource-control techniques.
• Design, implement, and troubleshoot networked applications using sockets, client-server architectures, and applicable network protocols.
• Analyze database engine source code, communication protocols, request and response formats, serialization, and packet layouts to support development and integration.
• Trace requests through database engine code to identify processing logic, integration points, and the effects of proposed modifications.
• Develop relational data-storage solutions using Structured Query Language (SQL), including data modeling, query development, performance tuning, and access control.
• Develop and integrate graph database solutions supporting relationship-based data modeling, analysis, and retrieval.
• Work across relational databases, graph databases, object storage, and search/indexing engines, including technologies such as PostgreSQL, Redis, RxDB, Neo4j, Amazon S3, and Elasticsearch.
• Refactor and modernize existing services, including transitioning functionality from Python to other implementation languages where appropriate.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to provision, configure, and manage infrastructure through repeatable, version-controlled workflows.
• Deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot cloud-hosted software, including dependencies on compute, storage, networking, identity, and security services.
• Integrate applications with identity providers to support authentication, authorization, federation, single sign-on, and identity-aware access control.
• Implement OpenID Connect (OIDC) integrations, including token validation, claims processing, client registration, redirect flows, session management, and secure API access.
• Incorporate Zero Trust Architecture principles into software designs, including interactions among policy decision, administration, information, and enforcement components.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity, infrastructure, data, and mission stakeholders to integrate security controls, cryptographic protections, logging, monitoring, and auditability throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Produce and maintain software designs, interface specifications, deployment procedures, configuration baselines, security implementation details, and operational support materials.