Requirements Engineering SME

Socket.dev; Washington (District of Columbia); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k)

401(k) matching

Dental insurance

Flexible spending account

Health insurance

Life insurance

Paid time off

Professional development assistance

Referral program

Tuition reimbursement

Vision insurance

Job summary

Socket.dev seeks a hands-on SME Requirements Engineer to define and manage solution-level requirements for a large federal modernization program in Washington, DC. You will run real elicitation sessions and produce traceable artifacts, not just coordinate meetings.

This hybrid role requires U.S. citizenship and experience across the full SDLC, from discovery to operations, with strong facilitation and governance participation.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of requirements engineering, business analysis, or systems analysis on complex programs.
• Ability to elicit and document multiple requirement types and convert stakeholder language into acceptance criteria.
• Hands-on experience with traceability, baselining, version control, and change impact analysis.

Responsibilities

• Elicit, analyze, and manage requirements across functional, technical, operational, security, and performance areas.
• Plan discovery sessions, facilitate reviews, and translate needs into testable requirements.
• Establish baselines and traceability from business need through operations; track status and changes.
• Collaborate with PMs, architects, engineers, cybersecurity, testers, and operations to resolve gaps.
• Define templates and quality standards; mentor other engineers and participate in governance forums.

Skills

Requirements elicitation

Traceability

Stakeholder management

Facilitation

Analytical writing

Mentorship

Change impact analysis

Cross-team collaboration

System lifecycle knowledge

Tools

Version control

Job description

We are seeking Subject Matter Expert (SME) Requirements Engineer to join our team supporting a large-scale federal modernization program. This role defines, elicits, validates, and manages solution-level functional, technical, operational, security, and performance requirements across complex, interdependent systems, carrying those requirements from initial discovery through architecture, design, testing, deployment, and operations.
This is a hands-on requirements role. You'll be expected to run real elicitation sessions and produce real traceable requirements artifacts, not just coordinate meetings.
This is a hybrid role based out of Washington, DC. Candidates must be U.S. citizens.

Key Responsibilities

• Requirements Elicitation & Analysis

• Plan and facilitate discovery sessions, interviews, technical working groups, stakeholder reviews, and design reviews.
• Translate business and mission needs into complete, testable, unambiguous functional, technical, operational, security, data, interface, and performance requirements.

• Traceability & Baselines

• Establish and maintain requirements baselines and traceability from business need through architecture, design, development, testing, deployment, and operations.
• Maintain requirements status, completion, changes, dependencies, assumptions, decisions, risks, and supporting evidence.

• Change Impact Analysis

• Analyze proposed changes and document impacts to architecture, scope, schedule, cost, testing, dependencies, security, and operational readiness.
• Support review and approval workflows for requirements changes.

• Cross-Team Collaboration

• Partner with project managers, architects, engineers, cybersecurity, testers, and operations to resolve requirements conflicts and gaps.
• Prepare requirements packages, review records, traceability matrices, and recurring status metrics.

• Quality & Mentorship

• Define templates and quality standards for requirements documentation.
• Review complex requirements work, mentor other engineers, and represent requirements management in governance forums.
• 10+ years of requirements engineering, business analysis, or systems analysis experience, including work on federal or comparably complex enterprise programs.
• Demonstrated ability to elicit and document multiple requirement types and convert stakeholder language into measurable acceptance criteria.
• Hands-on experience with requirements traceability, baselining, version control, change impact analysis, and review/approval workflows.
• Experience supporting the full system development lifecycle, from planning through implementation and operations, not only front-end documentation.
• Strong facilitation, analytical writing, conflict resolution, and stakeholder management skills.
• U.S. citizenship required.
• 401(k)
• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Flexible spending account
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Professional development assistance
• Referral program
• Tuition reimbursement
• Vision insurance