Principal Software Engineer - Insights & Intelligence

Northrop Grumman; United States; Hybrid; USD 104,000 - 155,000; Full time

Job summary

Northrop Grumman seeks a Principal Software Engineer in Falls Church, VA to drive data, analytics, and AI transformation within the Insights & Intelligence org. You will ensure reliable, secure operation of production data pipelines powering decision making.

Responsibilities include CI/CD engineering for data applications, observability, and collaboration with senior engineers to deliver stable data services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field and at least 5 years of relevant professional experience; 3 years with a Master’s degree.
• Demonstrated experience in software development, DevOps, platform engineering, data engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Advanced proficiency in Python, including experience developing robust, maintainable, and well-tested application code.
• Experience building reusable CI/CD workflows with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, or a comparable automation platform.
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing CI/CD practices for data platforms, infrastructure, or software systems.
• Strong understanding of source control, automated testing, deployment automation, and production support practices.
• Experience troubleshooting complex production systems, including workflow failures, data-quality issues, performance bottlenecks, and infrastructure-related incidents.
• Ability to obtain and maintain an active US government security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Pipeline Reliability: Design, implement, and maintain monitoring, alerting, and logging capabilities for production data pipelines.
• CI/CD Engineering: Develop and maintain continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines for data applications and infrastructure.
• Operational Excellence: Proactively identify, diagnose, and resolve workflow failures and performance bottlenecks.
• Data Integration Development: Design, develop, and optimize scalable data integration solutions from enterprise sources.
• Code Quality and Testing: Establish and maintain high standards for code quality and automated testing.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with senior data engineers, platform engineers, and architects to translate designs into stable data services.

Skills

Python

DevOps

Data engineering

CI/CD

Troubleshooting

Security clearance

Production systems

Git workflows

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related

Master’s degree

Tools

Databricks

AWS

Terraform

REST APIs

Unity Catalog

Delta Lake

Databricks Workflows

SQL warehouses

Job description

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: No relocation assistance available

CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: No

CLEARANCE TYPE: Secret

TRAVEL: No

Description

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people’s lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation’s history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they’re making history.

Northrop Grumman is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to join our Insights & Intelligence organization within the Chief Information & Digital Office (CIDO) to drive our data, analytics, and AI transformation. You will be responsible for the continuous, reliable, and secure operation of business-critical data pipelines and infrastructure that powers decision-making.

Primary location of this role is Falls Church, VA, but we may also consider a hybrid or teleworker arrangement for the role.

Key responsibilities :

• Pipeline Reliability: Design, implement, and maintain monitoring, alerting, and logging capabilities for production data pipelines, promoting high availability, reliability, and operational visibility across the Databricks environment.
• CI/CD Engineering: Develop and maintain continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines for data applications and infrastructure using Git, Databricks Asset Bundles, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, or comparable tools. Enable rapid, repeatable, and controlled deployments.
• Operational Excellence: Proactively identify, diagnose, and resolve workflow failures, performance bottlenecks, and other operational issues. Apply software engineering practices to improve platform resilience, maintainability, and supportability.
• Data Integration Development: Design, develop, and optimize scalable data integration solutions that ingest, transform, and deliver data from a variety of enterprise source systems.
• Code Quality and Testing: Establish and maintain high standards for code quality, architecture, documentation, and automated testing. Treat data pipelines and integration components as production-grade software.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with senior data engineers, platform engineers, and architects to translate technical designs into stable, secure, and well-engineered data services.

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field and at least 5 years of relevant professional experience; 3 years with a Master’s degree.
• Demonstrated experience in software development, DevOps, platform engineering, data engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Advanced proficiency in Python, including experience developing robust, maintainable, and well-tested application code.
• Experience building reusable CI/CD workflows with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, or a comparable automation platform.
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing CI/CD practices for data platforms, infrastructure, or software systems.
• Strong understanding of source control, automated testing, deployment automation, and production support practices.
• Experience troubleshooting complex production systems, including workflow failures, data-quality issues, performance bottlenecks, and infrastructure-related incidents.
• Ability to obtain and maintain an active US government security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Production experience managing infrastructure as code in a major cloud environment using Terraform, REST APIs, or comparable technologies.
• Hands-on experience with Databricks, Apache Spark, and AWS services such as Amazon S3, AWS Batch, and Amazon MSK or Apache Kafka.
• Experience configuring and operating multi-tenant Databricks workspaces, including resource monitoring, access control, workload isolation, and platform governance.
• Hands-on experience with Unity Catalog, Delta Lake, Databricks Workflows, Databricks Asset Bundles, and SQL warehouses.
• Experience implementing observability, incident response, performance optimization, and reliability practices for enterprise data platforms.
• Experience implementing automated deployment promotion across development, test, and production environments.
• Experience integrating enterprise authentication and authorization capabilities, including identity federation, service principals, role-based access control, and secrets management.
• Active U.S. Government Secret clearance.

Primary Level Salary Range: $103,600.00 - $155,400.00

The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate’s experience, education, skills and current market conditions.

Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.

The application period for the job is estimated to be 20 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates.

Northrop Grumman is an Equal Opportunity Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected class. For our complete EEO and pay transparency statement, please visit http://www.northropgrumman.com/EEO. U.S. Citizenship is required for all positions with a government clearance and certain other restricted positions.