Lead Software Engineer; Big Data​/Platform Architect

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 currently seeking a Software Engineer (Expert) in Herndon VA to work on a suite of services that will supply users with tools to automate a wide range of enterprise‑wide applications and data‑centric mission management applications, with a focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). The candidate will be part of a team of Software Developers, ETL Developers and Data Scientists to enhance existing production applications and build out new web services on a routine production cadence to meet the evolving needs of users.

This position focuses on developing high‑performance, distributed systems that operate on petabyte‑scale structured and unstructured data, enabling mission users to rapidly access, process and exploit critical information. You will operate at the intersection of big data, distributed systems and mission analytics, building core platform capabilities such as ingest pipelines, text extraction services and search infrastructure that directly enable downstream analytics, AI and operational workflows.

This hands‑on technical leadership role is for engineers who thrive on building scalable systems from the ground up, solving hard data problems and delivering production‑grade capabilities that operate in high‑stakes, real‑world environments.

• Integrate AI/ML technology into a production web application
• Work with iterative software development teams while adhering to all reporting requirements
• Design, develop and unit‑test code for a production system and demonstrate capabilities
• Develop rapid prototypes to drive out requirements and design
• Provide demonstrations and detailed walkthroughs of features to a variety of technical and non‑technical audiences
• Meet with stakeholders, analyze requirements, develop user stories and translate these into software development tasks
• Develop technical documentation and briefing materials to support program status reviews, control gates and other presentations as directed
• Write and maintain technical documentation for application workflows, integrations and compliance procedures
• Optimize and enhance application performance, ensuring scalability and security

• 4–6 years of backend development, proficient in both Python and Java
• 4–6 years of frontend development, experience with Angular
• 6–8 years of AWS architecture design proficiency
• 6–8 years of Linux system experience – shell scripting, mounting drives, text editing with vi or emacs, system diagnostics (memory management, process monitoring)
• 2–3 years working with AI/ML development and data science understanding
• Experience on Agile software development teams following Scrum and Kanban
• Experience using Jira, Confluence and Git Hub for work documentation and collaboration
• 6–8 years of experience with SQL and No
  
  SQL databases
• 6–8 years of experience deploying applications in a commercial cloud services (C2S) or Amazon Web Services environment
• 6–8 years of experience with search and analytic tools such as Elastic Search, Solr/Lucene or Open Search
• 2–4 years of experience with Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) on large structured and unstructured data sets
• 6–8 years of ability to design, develop, test and implement new applications based on project requirements
• Ability to work individually and within project teams
• Proven ability to decompose concepts into discrete development tasks and meet deadlines
• 6–8 years of experience with microservices, including Docker, Podman and other containerization services
• 6–8 years of object‑oriented programming experience
• Python is the preferred…