Principal CNO Programmer: Lead Mission-Critical Cyber Ops

NetSage; Maryland; On-site; USD 190,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

NetSage seeks a Principal CNO Programmer to lead a team in designing, developing, and maintaining CNO capabilities. The role provides technical leadership across engineering teams, guiding implementation from design through testing and deployment in mission-focused environments.

The ideal candidate has extensive CNO software experience, strong leadership, and a deep understanding of operating system internals and low-level programming for Unix and Windows.

Qualifications

• B.S. in Computer Science or related field with 12+ years of relevant experience.
• Doctoral degree with 8 years, or M.S. with 10 years, or no degree with 16 years of relevant experience.
• Twelve (12) years of professional experience programming in one or more of the following languages: Assembly, C, C++, C#, Perl, or Python.
• Ten (10) years of experience programming CNO tools.
• Five (5) years of experience leading, managing, and/or supervising teams in support of CNO capability development.
• Extensive knowledge of operating system internals, low-level software development, and kernel-level programming.
• Demonstrated experience developing software that interfaces with low-level Unix and/or Windows operating system internals, including runtime linkers/loaders, object file formats (e.g., PE, COFF, ELF), file system architectures (e.g., NTFS, ext2, btrfs), operating system security models, and process/thread APIs and data structures.
• Proficiency using reverse engineering and debugging tools such as IDA Pro, Ghidra, OllyDbg, or similar platforms.
• Experience directing the development of new CNO solutions that meet mission demands.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of developers to design, develop, and maintain CNO capabilities.
• Provide technical leadership, guiding engineering teams in the creation, testing, integration, and deployment of mission-focused capabilities while ensuring solutions align with evolving operational requirements.
• Direct the development of new CNO solutions that meet mission demands.

Skills

Assembly

C

C++

C#

Perl

Python

Education

B.S. in Computer Science

Ph.D. in related field

M.S. in CS

No degree, 16 years experience

Tools

IDA Pro

Ghidra

OllyDbg

Job description

NetSage seeks a Principal CNO Programmer to lead a team in designing, developing, and maintaining CNO capabilities. The role provides technical leadership across engineering teams, guiding implementation from design through testing and deployment in mission-focused environments.

The ideal candidate has extensive CNO software experience, strong leadership, and a deep understanding of operating system internals and low-level programming for Unix and Windows.