Senior Mission Software Engineer

About the Team

The Imaging team builds and fields state-of-the-art camera and sensor systems deployed to solve real security challenges for the United States and its allies. We work across the full stack, from bare-metal hardware and firmware to networked services and cloud integrations, and we own our systems all the way through to the field. When something breaks in a deployed environment, we fix it.

About the Role

We're looking for a Mission Software Engineer to join the Imaging Interfaces team. This is not a pure product development role. You will spend meaningful time keeping fielded systems alive, triaging issues across the full stack, and serving as a technical representative for our products in integrations with external teams and customers.

The work is varied and sometimes ambiguous. You might spend a morning extending a gRPC service, an afternoon diagnosing a time sync issue on a deployed device over the phone with a field operator, and a week traveling to support a customer integration. You'll need to be comfortable with that range—and ideally energized by it.

If you want to own your software end-to-end in a fast-moving environment where the stakes are real, this role is built for you.

What You'll Do

Own fielded system success. You are responsible for the health and uptime of deployed imaging systems. When issues arise—whether the root cause is in your code, the firmware, the network, or the hardware—you triage, diagnose, and drive resolution.

Build and maintain production services. You'll develop and extend modular software services that run on edge-compute devices in austere environments. These services need to be reliable, observable, and maintainable by engineers who didn't write them.

Support field operations. You'll work directly with field operators and non-technical users to diagnose and resolve issues on deployed hardware. Clear communication under pressure is part of the job.

Represent the team externally. You'll serve as a subject matter expert in integrations with other products and teams; sometimes remotely, sometimes on-site. You don't need to know everything, but you need to be able to speak credibly across the full system stack and know what you don't know.

Maintain end-to-end system understanding. Our devices sit at the intersection of hardware, firmware, networking, and software. You'll develop broad fluency across that stack over time, and apply it to optimize how our services interact and degrade gracefully when components fail.

Collaborate across teams. You'll plan, build, and test complex functionality alongside firmware, hardware, and platform engineers. You'll need to be effective working across team and organizational boundaries.

Travel expected approximately 15% of the time for field testing and customer integrations.

What We're Looking For

Required

• 5+ years of experience in software development with meaningful production responsibility—not just shipping features, but owning systems after they ship
• Strong Python and C++ skills. You don't need to be a language expert in both, but you need to be able to work effectively in either
• 5+ years working in Linux-based environments, including bare-metal hardware
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve issues across system boundaries (networking, services, hardware interaction) without always having full visibility into every component
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical problems clearly to non-technical audiences
• Willingness to travel approximately 15% of the time for field testing and customer integrations.
• Eligibility to obtain and maintain a U.S. Secret clearance

Preferred

• Experience with gRPC or similar RPC frameworks
• Familiarity with systems service management and observability practices on Linux
• React/JSX experience; we have a UI surface and it matters
• Familiarity with Nix or NixOS—uncommon, but genuinely valuable on our stack
• Experience supporting fielded or deployed systems, not just development environments