Space Force Software Architect

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Engineering, plus a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience; or Master's degree in Engineering, plus a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience.

CLEARANCE REQUIREMENTS: Department of Defense Secret security clearance is required at time of hire. Applicants selected will be subject to a U.S. Government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information. Due to the nature of work performed within our facilities, U.S. citizenship is required.

Responsibilities for this Position

General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) is seeking an experienced Software Architect to provide technical and architectural leadership for the Ground Management and Integration (GMI) program supporting the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA).

GMI is part of the PWSA program and continues GDMS’s Ground Segment work performed under the Tranche 1 (T1) Operations and Integration (O&I) program. The successful candidate will define, guide, and evolve the software architecture for critical ground capabilities supporting Tranche 2 (T2), while ensuring the architecture supports interoperability, scalability, and continuity into Tranche 3 (T3) and future PWSA tranches.

The Space Force Software Architect will work across three related PWSA levels:

• Enterprise Level: Tranche-agnostic architecture and integration across the Ground Segment (GS), Space Segment (SS), and User Segment, including mission systems.
• Ground Segment Level: GDMS ground development and integration responsibilities, including SUPERNOVAs, NOVAs, Ground Entry Points (GEPs), and associated ground networks. This work began with T1 O&I, continues with T2 GMI, and is expected to continue through T3 and beyond.
• GMI Level: T2-specific ground management and integration work, including T2 SUPERNOVAs and T2 GEPs.

This role requires a highly capable technical leader with substantial experience delivering secure, resilient, mission-critical software and cloud-enabled systems in classified defense or intelligence environments.

Essential Responsibilities

• Lead software architecture definition, maturation, and technical governance for GMI capabilities supporting SUPERNOVAs, GEPs, and related ground-network integrations.
• Support existing architectures and develop new ones that evolve with the changing requirements and new functionality added to the program.
• Ensure GMI-level architecture aligns with Ground Segment and Enterprise-level objectives, interfaces, technical standards, operational needs, and integration dependencies.
• Architect distributed, secure, highly available, resilient, and maintainable ground-system software solutions for classified mission environments.
• Establish architectural patterns and standards for service design, APIs, data exchange, event-driven systems, messaging, workflow orchestration, identity and access management, logging, monitoring, and operational observability.
• Lead technical definition and integration of SUPERNOVAs, NOVAs, GEPs, associated ground networks, cloud services, and supporting infrastructure.
• Define and maintain architecture artifacts, including logical, physical, deployment, interface, data-flow, security, and operational views.
• Develop and govern integration approaches across the Ground Segment, Space Segment, User Segment/mission systems, operational users, external partners, and ground infrastructure.
• Lead architecture reviews, design reviews, technical interchange meetings, integration readiness assessments, and technical risk-reduction activities.
• Identify and manage technical risks associated with interoperability, cyber resilience, cloud adoption, system performance, integration, sustainment, and future tranche evolution.
• Partner with systems engineering, software development, cybersecurity, network engineering, integration and test, platform engineering, program management, and customer stakeholders.
• Provide architectural direction for cloud migration, cloud-native application development, hybrid-cloud integration, and deployment of mission software in secure or classified environments.
• Guide the implementation of DevSecOps practices, including secure CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, containerization, infrastructure as code, configuration management, artifact management, and continuous monitoring.
• Support technical planning, roadmap development, estimates, proposal efforts, schedule planning, and transition-to-operations activities.
• Mentor software architects, software engineers, systems engineers, and technical leads; promote disciplined software engineering and architecture practices across the program.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Minimum 25 years of progressive experience in software engineering, software architecture, systems engineering, or technical leadership roles.
• Minimum 10 years of recent experience designing, architecting, integrating, or sustaining complex distributed software systems.
• Demonstrated experience supporting classified systems, defense systems, intelligence systems, space systems, satellite ground systems, command-and-control systems, or other mission-critical operational environments.
• Active DoD Secret security clearance, with the ability to maintain the clearance required for the program.
• Demonstrated experience designing, implementing, or integrating cloud architectures, including cloud-native, hybrid-cloud, and/or on-premises-to-cloud environments.
• Experience designing secure cloud solutions using AWS services and capabilities, including compute, storage, networking, identity and access management, monitoring, logging, security controls, and disaster recovery.
• Experience with cloud deployment and operations in controlled, restricted, regulated, or classified environments; familiarity with AWS GovCloud or comparable government cloud environments is strongly desired.
• Strong understanding of software architecture principles, distributed systems, service-oriented architectures, microservices, APIs, event-driven architectures, data architectures, and secure software design.
• Experience integrating software systems with complex networks, external interfaces, mission systems, hardware platforms, and geographically distributed operational environments.
• Experience with cybersecurity engineering concepts, including secure communications, encryption, authentication, authorization, audit logging, vulnerability management, secure configuration, and zero-trust principles.
• Ability to communicate architecture decisions, technical trade studies, risks, and integration approaches clearly to engineering teams, program leadership, customers, and mission stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Cybersecurity, or a related discipline.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional and/or AWS Certified Security - Specialty.
• Experience developing, deploying, or sustaining workloads in AWS GovCloud, AWS Secret Region, or comparable government cloud environments.
• Experience with PWSA, Space Development Agency programs, DoD space programs, satellite operations, satellite ground systems, ground networks, command-and-control systems, or tactical mission systems.
• Experience supporting multi-tranche, incremental capability-delivery programs requiring interoperability between legacy, developmental, and operational systems.
• Experience with SUPERNOVAs, NOVAs, GEPs, satellite ground entry points, ground network architecture, or comparable mission-ground infrastructure.
• Experience with DevSecOps and platform engineering practices, including CI/CD, automated security scanning, software supply-chain security, containers, Kubernetes, Helm, Docker, Terraform, Ansible, and infrastructure as code.
• Experience implementing or integrating cloud platforms using AWS services such as EC2, EKS, ECS, Lambda, S3, RDS, VPC, Route 53, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, Security Hub, GuardDuty, and related services.
• Familiarity with RMF, NIST Risk Management Framework guidance, NIST 800-53 security controls, STIGs, Authority to Operate (ATO) processes, and DoD cybersecurity requirements.
• Experience with Model-Based Systems Engineering, architecture frameworks, interface-control documentation, requirements traceability, and system-of-systems integration.
• Experience leading technical teams in Agile, iterative, or scaled development environments.
• Active Top Secret clearance or eligibility to obtain one.

Desired Attributes

• Strategic architect able to connect detailed GMI implementation decisions to the long-term PWSA Enterprise and Ground Segment architecture.
• Technical leader who can work effectively across software, systems, cybersecurity, cloud, network, integration, and operations disciplines.
• Demonstrated judgment in balancing mission needs, security requirements, technical risk, schedule, cost, and long-term sustainment.
• Effective collaborator capable of building alignment across GDMS organizations, government customers, mission partners, and subcontractor teams.
• Strong commitment to secure, reliable, scalable, and operationally effective mission capabilities.
• Willingness and ability to work primarily from the Scottsdale, Arizona area and travel as required to support program, customer, and integration activities

Our Commitment to You:

• An exciting career path with opportunities for continuous learning and development.
• Research oriented work, alongside award winning teams developing practical solutions for our nation’s security
• Flexible schedules with every other Friday off work, if desired (9/80 schedule)
• Competitive benefits, including 401k matching, flex time off, paid parental leave, healthcare benefits, health & wellness programs, employee resource and social groups, and more
• See more at gdmissionsystems.com/careers/why-work-for-us/benefits

Workplace Options: This position is fully on-site, OR Hybrid/Flex with a minimum of three days on-site.While on-site, you will be a part of the SDA Team located at the Scottsdale, Arizona facility

Salary Note

Combined Salary Range

Company Overview

General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) engineers a diverse portfolio of high technology solutions, products and services that enable customers to successfully execute missions across all domains of operation. With a global team of 12,000+ top professionals, we partner with the best in industry to expand the bounds of innovation in the defense and scientific arenas. Given the nature of our work and who we are, we value trust, honesty, alignment and transparency. We offer highly competitive benefits and pride ourselves in being a great place to work with a shared sense of purpose. You will also enjoy a flexible work environment where contributions are recognized and rewarded. If who we are and what we do resonates with you, we invite you to join our high-performance team!

Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans