Principal Engineer - Distributed Messaging and Workloads

SciTec Incorporated; Huntsville, Northern (AL, KY); Hybrid; USD 151,000 - 201,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) match

Health insurance (HSA)

Paid time off

Flexible work hours

Life insurance

Job summary

SciTec Incorporated seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead our Workload Communications Domain. You will guide distributed data and control flow among processes, services, and containers for mission-critical processing and visualization.

This hands-on role combines technical leadership with practical code-level coaching across teams. Ideal candidates have deep production experience with Kafka/RabbitMQ/ActiveMQ, RPC frameworks (gRPC), and strong Linux skills, plus 10+ years in distributed

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field and 10+ years designing, implementing, and troubleshooting production software systems.
• Deep production experience with distributed communication systems and multiple message brokers or event streaming platforms.
• Experience with RPC or low-level messaging frameworks (e.g., gRPC, ZeroMQ).
• Strong understanding of delivery semantics, ordering, idempotency, and fault handling in distributed systems.
• Proficiency in at least one backend language (C++, Python, Go, Rust, Java, or Node.js).
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Assess current communication technologies, patterns, and gaps across engineering teams.
• Define evaluation criteria and use tests to select and maintain recommended technologies and practices.
• Document ADRs, reference architectures, and guides for tuning and troubleshooting.
• Build reference implementations, starter templates, and shared libraries for common use cases.
• Guide pattern choices: synchronous vs asynchronous vs event streaming; ensure robust delivery guarantees and backpressure.

Skills

Distributed messaging

Event streaming

RPC systems

gRPC

C++

Python

Go

Rust

Linux

Mentoring

Technical writing

DoD security clearance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kafka

RabbitMQ

ActiveMQ

MQTT

OpenTelemetry

Kubernetes

Job description

SciTec Incorporated seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead our Workload Communications Domain. You will guide distributed data and control flow among processes, services, and containers for mission-critical processing and visualization.

This hands-on role combines technical leadership with practical code-level coaching across teams. Ideal candidates have deep production experience with Kafka/RabbitMQ/ActiveMQ, RPC frameworks (gRPC), and strong Linux skills, plus 10+ years in distributed