{"id":2380581,"url":"https://alion.io/job/iridium-principal-software-engineer","title":"Principal Software Engineer","company":{"id":1838031,"name":"Iridium","domain":"iridium.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/iridium-com","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"iCIMS","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Chandler, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":150000,"max":200000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":200000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Airflow","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon EC2","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon ECS","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Pulsar","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"FastAPI","optional":false},{"name":"GitHub Actions","optional":false},{"name":"GitLab CI","optional":false},{"name":"Jenkins","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"NumPy","optional":false},{"name":"Pandas","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-12T19:15:09Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-12","last_verified_at":"2026-10-13T05:38:54Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Company Overview\nIridium is an award-winning satellite communications company operating the world's only truly global voice and data network, delivering reliable connectivity anywhere on Earth. For more than 20 years, Iridium has powered mission-critical communications for governments, businesses, aviation, maritime, and the rapidly expanding Internet of Things.\nNow part of Iridium, Aireon is the world’s only space-based air traffic surveillance system, providing real-time visibility of aircraft over oceans, the poles, and remote regions. Together, Iridium and Aireon are helping build a safer, more connected, and more efficient future for global aviation.\nJoin our team and help shape how the world stays connected. We foster a collaborative, inclusive culture where employees are empowered to innovate, grow professionally, and make a meaningful impact.\nWhat We’re Looking For:\nIridium is seeking a hands-on technical leader with expertise in test automation, software architecture, and the engineering tooling that powers modern development teams. In this role, you will serve as the technical authority over automation framework for our Solutions Automation team. You will partner closely with the associate director, engineering managers, and stakeholders to translate the long-term technical roadmap into well-designed solutions, leading through technical authority rather than direct reports. You will thrive in this role if you are a technically sound engineer who is able to solve complex architecture problems, set standards that elevate the entire team, and drive innovation through automation.\nOur work spans the full stack and then some: from device-level integration (Python/pySerial talking directly to hardware) up through Python data and automation services (FastAPI, Pandas, NumPy, Airflow), event streaming with Apache Pulsar, PostgreSQL and the ELK stack, and out to React front-ends on Linux. Parts of our infrastructure run on AWS (EC2, ECS/ECR, ALB/NLB), and we're actively expanding our cloud footprint. We're looking for someone comfortable operating across that whole range, not an expert in every tool.\nWhat You’ll Do:\nPartner with technical leadership to define and evolve the framework architecture for the Solutions Automation team, including design patterns, technology selection, and integration standards\nDefine standards and reference patterns for integrating generative AI into the software development lifecycle, including AI-assisted test generation, triage, and developer tooling, with clear attention to quality, code provenance, IP, and security\nPrototype new frameworks, patterns, and AI-augmented tooling to validate architectural decisions before team-wide adoption\nPartner with the associate director and engineering managers to shape and drive the long-term technical roadmap, establishing and maintaining technical standards, coding practices, and quality benchmarks, and reviewing and approving designs\nOwn lab and framework standardization, ensuring consistent environments and tooling across all teams, and drive technical modernization and platform scalability initiatives\nRepresent the Solutions Automation team (SAT) in Technical Interchange Meetings (TIMs), Daily Change Control Boards (DCCBs), and other technical forums, and facilitate architecture reviews and technical workshops that elevate the team’s capabilities\nGrow the technical depth of every engineer on the team through mentorship, design and code reviews, pairing on hard problems, and leading technical onboarding for new hires\nProvide technical evaluation support during hiring, including the design of technical interview assessments and candidate evaluation\nWhat You’ll Need to Succeed:\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field\n10+ years of progressive engineering experience, preferably in software development, automation, and/or testing\nDemonstrated experience defining software architecture, framework design, and technical standards for automation or software development teams\nComfort operating across the full stack, including low-level device or hardware integration, with the ability to reason about system behavior from the protocol layer up to the user interface\nDemonstrated experience integrating generative AI tooling into software development or test automation workflows, with the judgment to know where AI adds leverage and where it adds risk\nStrong understanding of modern software development practices, CI/CD pipelines, cloud-native architectures, and software testing principles (including test strategy, automation, and integration with the SDLC)\nProven ability to define and communicate technical vision, making architecture decisions that balance innovation with pragmatism, and to evaluate and introduce new technologies, tools, and patterns that improve team productivity and product quality\nExcellent communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical concepts clearly to both engineering and non-technical stakeholders\nProduct-minded engineering judgment and strong design taste, with experience collaborating with product managers or directly with end users to ensure the team solves the right problems and ships tooling users genuinely want to use\nCuriosity and a growth mindset, with a pattern of learning new domains and tools quickly, sound judgment in assessing risks, tradeoffs, and second-order effects when making architecture decisions, and the willingness to change direction when new evidence contradicts earlier assumptions\nBias for action and a track record of shipping complex technical initiatives end to end\nThings That Would be Great if You Brought to the Table:\nKnowledge of satellite communications, computer networking, or telecommunications systems\nExposure or experience with laboratory test environments\nExperience with internal developer platforms, platform engineering, or developer experience (DX) initiatives\nExperience with infrastructure-as-code, modern CI/CD platforms (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, etc.), or DevSecOps practices\nExperience with agentic or autonomous systems, AI evaluation frameworks, or evaluating AI coding assistants at team or org scale\nExperience with software management tools (JIRA, etc.)\nExperience scaling engineering practices across multiple Agile delivery teams\nWe’ll also need you to :\nThis position directly performs under, supports, or is exposed to a U.S. government contract. To comply with the requirements of that U.S. government contract, applicants for this position must be a U.S. citizen.\nBe on-call to support operational issues\nBe able to travel up to 15 days annually\nWork Environment:\nThis position primarily works in an office setting and is largely sedentary with the majority of the position working with a computer. The role typically requires the use of basic office equipment such as a phone, video, computer, keyboard, mouse, and printer.\nWe believe in-person connection drives innovation, strengthens mentorship, and builds culture, while flexibility enables employees to do their best work. Under Iridium’s Hybrid Work Policy, employees are expected to work at least four days per week (approximately 80%) in an Iridium office to support collaboration, relationship-building, and professional growth.\nAdditional Information\nThis job description outlines the general nature and level of work for this role and is not a comprehensive list of duties, responsibilities, or qualifications. Employees may be assigned additional responsibilities as needed.\nBase Pay Range: $150,000 - $200,000 USD\nActual compensation will be determined based on a variety of factors and this range represents an estimate of compensation at the time of posting. Base salary is only one part of our compensation package for this role. You may also be eligible for company stock and annual bonus. Employee benefits also include medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage; 401(k) retirement plan options; paid time off and paid holidays; paid parental leave; and other discounts and perks.\nIridium is an Equal Opportunity Employer, including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans.","description_format":"text","description_chars":8183,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work","Insurance coverage","Parental leave","Retirement plans","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":[],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-12T19:15:09Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":33,"reasons":["conf:0","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-13T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":200000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/iridium-principal-software-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/iridium-principal-software-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-13T08:42:30Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":13007,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-14T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":1838031},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1838031"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Firidium-principal-software-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Firidium-principal-software-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Firidium-principal-software-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/iridium-principal-software-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Firidium-principal-software-engineer"}]}