{"id":2184950,"url":"https://alion.io/job/scitec-principal-software-engineer-workload-communications-domain-lead","title":"Principal Software Engineer - Workload Communications Domain Lead","company":{"id":686565,"name":"SciTec","domain":"scitec.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/scitec","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workable","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":91,"open_postings":16,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.563,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":20,"computed_at":"2026-10-20T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Princeton, United States","Boulder, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":164000,"max":218000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":218000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"ActiveMQ","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"gRPC","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"MQTT","optional":false},{"name":"Node JS","optional":false},{"name":"OpenTelemetry","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RabbitMQ","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"TypeScript","optional":false},{"name":"ZeroMQ","optional":false},{"name":"C","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-09T15:53:36Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-09","last_verified_at":"2026-10-20T13:28:59Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":10,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":10},"description":"SciTec, a Firefly Aerospace company is a dynamic non-traditional defense contractor that delivers advanced technologies in support of U.S. National Security and Defense. For the past forty-five plus years, we have supported Department of Defense customers by developing innovative remote sensing algorithms, tools, and techniques to deliver world-class data exploitation capabilities supporting missile defense; intelligence, surveillance, & reconnaissance; space domain awareness; and aircraft survivability missions.\nImportant Notice: SciTec exclusively works on U.S. government contracts that require U.S. citizenship for all employees. Applicants that do not meet this requirement will not be considered.\nWe are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to serve as our Workload Communications Domain Lead. In this role, you will guide how our engineering teams design and optimize the flow of data and control between processes, services, containers, and other distributed workloads that support mission critical data processing, visualization, and operational workflows. This role is hands on and combines deep technical work with technical stewardship: you will assess how our teams communicate between workloads today, establish evidence-based recommendations, build reference implementations, and work directly with engineers to raise our organization-wide capability.\nThe ideal candidate has deep, production-grade expertise in distributed messaging, event streaming, and RPC systems, the ability to select communication patterns based on real workload requirements, and the communication and mentoring skills to turn that expertise into practical guidance that other engineers can adopt independently.\nResponsibilities\nAssess current communication technologies, patterns, recurring problems, and capability gaps across engineering teams.\nDefine evaluation criteria and use load tests and benchmarks under representative traffic and failure conditions to select and maintain a Core Collection of recommended communication technologies, patterns, and practices.\nDocument recommended technologies, valid alternatives, and exceptional cases through decision guides, reference architectures, architecture decision records (ADRs), and tuning and troubleshooting guides.\nBuild and maintain validated reference implementations, starter templates, and shared libraries for common communication use cases.\nGuide the choice between synchronous request/response, asynchronous messaging, event streaming, and other communication patterns.\nEstablish practices for delivery guarantees, ordering, retries, deduplication, and idempotency.\nGuide backpressure, buffering, batching, flow control, and consumer concurrency design.\nOptimize throughput, latency, serialization overhead, network utilization, and memory pressure.\nEstablish practices for message schemas, data contracts, and backward- and forward-compatible schema evolution.\nGuide partitioning, fan-out, replay, retention, and consumer-group design.\nEstablish practices for fault handling, dead-letter processing, observability, and recovery.\nPartner with engineers through pair programming, design and code reviews, troubleshooting, and focused workshops to support consistent adoption of recommended practices.\nCollaborate with Data Storage and Deployment Environments domain leads on cross-domain problems such as consumer lag, memory pressure, distributed tracing, and end-to-end throughput and latency.\nPeriodically reassess and update recommendations and documentation as technologies, workloads, and engineering needs change.\nTrack adoption and engineering outcomes against established baselines and report results to engineering leadership.\nPerform other duties as assigned.\nRequirements\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, or a related technical field.\n10+ years of professional experience designing, implementing, and troubleshooting production software systems, including significant experience with distributed communication systems.\nDeep production experience with one or more message brokers or event streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, MQTT).\nExperience with one or more RPC or low-level messaging frameworks (e.g., gRPC, ZeroMQ).\nStrong understanding of delivery semantics, ordering, idempotency, backpressure, and fault handling in distributed systems.\nExperience with serialization formats and schema evolution (e.g., Protocol Buffers, Avro, FlatBuffers, JSON Schema).\nDemonstrated ability to load test and profile communication paths, analyze results, and turn findings into actionable recommendations.\nExperience evaluating technical alternatives and clearly articulating their tradeoffs.\nProficiency in at least one backend language such as C++, Python, Go, Rust, Java, or TypeScript/Node.js.\nComfortable working in Linux development environments.\nStrong technical writing, mentoring, and cross-team communication skills, with the ability to influence engineering practices through technical credibility.\nAbility to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance.\nCandidates with the following qualifications will be preferred:\nExperience leading technology standardization, technical governance, or internal platform/guidance efforts across multiple teams.\nExperience with high-throughput or low-latency data pipelines, including network and memory performance tuning.\nExperience with distributed tracing and observability tooling (e.g., OpenTelemetry).\nExperience running messaging systems in containerized or Kubernetes environments.\nFamiliarity with mission data workflows or sensor processing architectures.\nActive DoD Secret clearance or higher.\n*Resumes, Cover Letters, and Applications which are generated by AI will not be considered for employment.\nColorado Residents: In any materials you submit, you may redact or remove age-identifying information such as age, date of birth, or dates of school attendance or graduation. You will not be penalized for redacting or removing this information\nBenefits\nSciTec offers a highly competitive salary and benefits package, including:\n4% Safe Harbor 401(k) match\n100% company paid HSA Medical insurance, with a choice of 2 buy-up options\n80% company paid Dental insurance\n100% company paid Vision insurance\n100% company paid Life insurance\n100% company paid Long-term Disability insurance\nShort-term Disability insurance\nAnnual Profit-Sharing Plan\nDiscretionary Performance Bonus\nPaid Parental Leave\nGenerous Paid Time Off, including Holiday, Vacation, and Sick Pay\nFlexible Work Hours\nThe pay range for this position is $164,000 - $218,000 / year. SciTec considers several factors when extending an offer of employment, including but not limited to the role and associated responsibilities, a candidate's work experience, education/training, and key skills. This is not a guarantee of compensation.\nSciTec is proud to be an Equal Opportunity employer. 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