Principal Software Development Engineer in Test

SAIC; Huntsville (AL); Remote; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Remote work available

Travel opportunities

Job summary

SAIC is seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to join the JRE software team as a remote role within the United States. The position requires US citizenship and a Secret clearance, with up to 10% CONUS travel.

The role focuses on expanding automated testing across Java/Kotlin components, building performance tests, and mentoring others to raise test coverage on large-scale, mission-critical systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree plus nine years of experience (or 13 years in lieu of degree).
• Deep expertise in JVM languages (Java, Kotlin, Scala) and concurrent programming.
• Experience testing large-scale mission-critical systems using modern test frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Expand JRE's unit, integration, service, GUI, and end-to-end test automation.
• Develop and maintain a comprehensive automated performance test suite (load, stress, endurance).
• Mentor testers in automation best practices and improve test coverage across the codebase.
• Refactor code for testability and introduce new testing interfaces for white-/gray-box testing.

Skills

Java/JVM

Kotlin/Scala

Concurrency

Test Automation

JUnit/Mockito

Education

Bachelor's degree + 9y exp

Tools

JUnit

Mockito

MockK

JMeter

Gatling

Gradle

Job description

Minimum Clearance Required None

Job ID 2618776-OTHLOC-100000740513010 Location Huntsville, AL, US Date Posted 2026-11-03 Category Software Subcategory SW Engineer Schedule Full-Time Shift Day Job Travel Yes - 10% of the time Minimum Clearance Required None Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain Secret Potential for Remote Work ORA_REMOTE Description SAIC is seeking a Senior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to join the Joint Range Extension (JRE) software development team. This is a REMOTE ROLE within the UNITED STATES. MUST BE A U.S. CITIZEN. This role will involve up to 10% of CONUS travel. JRE is a combat-proven data link gateway that plays a vital role in the defense of the United States and our allies by extending the reach of tactical data across the battlespace and around the globe. It is a large, mission-critical, near-real-time system written predominantly in Java and Kotlin, and also includes C++ components. JRE is deployed everywhere from handheld devices and small-form-factor drones to strategic bombers, guided-missile destroyers, and global command-and-control centers. As a Senior Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) on the software development team, you'll work closely with other developers, as well as with testers and test engineers on the test team. Through test automation, you'll play an essential role in enabling rapid, agentically-developed, high-quality releases of JRE to meet the current and future mission needs of the warfighter. Your impact will extend beyond the code you write yourself. You'll lead projects and build up the test engineering skills of the people you work with.

Job Duties

• Expand JRE's unit, integration, service, GUI, and end-to-end test automation.
• Engineer and maintain a comprehensive automated performance test suite covering load, stress, and endurance testing; support our IT team with capacity planning for the hardware environment it requires.
• Design, develop, and maintain advanced simulators for IP and serial tactical data link terminals, radios, navigation systems, and sensors.
• Contribute to the definition and ongoing verification of minimum system requirements for JRE's full range of deployment platforms.
• Refactor JRE code for testability, introducing API, RPC, and messaging seams to enable additional white- and gray-box testing.
• Mentor developers, testers, and less-experienced test engineers in test automation best practices as we expand automated coverage across the codebase.
• Optimize the performance and quality of our test automation suites.
• Quarantine, troubleshoot, and fix nondeterministic tests.

Qualifications

Required Education

• Bachelor's degree and nine (9) years’ experience; additional four (4) years’ experience can be considered in lieu of degree.

Required Clearance

• Must have the ability to obtain and maintain an active Secret security clearance; US Citizenship required.

Required Skills

• Deep expertise in the JVM and Java, with familiarity with Kotlin and Scala; strong concurrent programming skills (Threads, Executor Framework, Futures/Promises, Virtual Threads, Reactor, Kotlin Coroutines) and experience testing concurrent/asynchronous code (Reactor Test, Kotlinx Coroutines Test).
• Proven experience developing and maintaining high test automation coverage for large-scale (1M+ LOC), mission-critical, high-reliability, near-real-time systems, using JVM testing and mocking frameworks such as JUnit, AssertJ, Mockito, and MockK.
• Experience with automated performance testing and analysis using tools such as JMeter and Gatling, and with continuous integration and modern deployment practices for edge and cloud systems in Gradle-built projects.
• Familiarity with C++ and related test automation frameworks (Doctest, Google Mock), along with experience in network programming, networking protocols, low-level binary data processing, and distributed systems using RPC and message-oriented architectures.
• Thorough knowledge of object-oriented and functional design patterns; software design principles; refactoring techniques; code and test smells; domain-driven design; and a proven track record leading successful large-scale, phased refactoring initiatives.
• Experience mentoring developers and testers in test automation best practices; strong skills with dependency injection and the Spring ecosystem (Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Security) and their integration testing utilities; and a collaborative, test-driven, iterative development style using Agile methods (Scrum, Extreme Programming, Lean) including pairing and mobbing.

Desired Skills

• Public contributions to open-source projects.
• Familiarity with any of the following
  • Tactical data link standards such as MIL-STD-6016, MIL-STD-6017, MIL-STD-3011, MIL-STD-6020, MIL-STD-6040, MIL-STD-2525, MIL-STD-1553, etc.
  • Tactical terminals and radios such as MIDS JTRS, STT, BATS-D, AN/ARC, and AN/PRC.
  • Navigation and avionics standards such as NMEA 0183, GPS-153, ARINC 429, and ARINC 661.
  • Security standards such as DISA STIGs, NIST SP 800-171, and NIST SP 800-207.

Target salary range $120,001 - $160,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.