Senior Systems Software Engineer

Key Responsibilities

• Debug and resolve cross-system issues spanning software, real-time messaging, networking, RF, and hardware — owning the investigation even when the root cause sits outside your primary depth.
• Pinpoint performance and latency issues in cross-system infrastructure (messaging fabric, gateway, runtime) supporting multi-agent coordination, and drive them to resolution.
• Write and maintain software stacks under a systems architect's supervision, for work outside Core Engineering sub-teams' product ownership.
• Investigate and characterize system behavior under degraded, intermittent, or contested link conditions.
• Perform hands-on hardware diagnostics using basic bench tools (multimeter, oscilloscope) to isolate issues at the hardware/software boundary.
• Hold credible technical conversations with networking, RF, and hardware SMEs — translate their findings into system-level constraints and software fixes.
• Contribute to System Health: performance baselining, system-level verification, crash analysis to root cause, and KPI/dashboard evidence used for release go/no-go decisions, with a focus on driving measurable improvements in latency, reliability, and uptime.
• Identify and mitigate cross-system risks impacting mission effectiveness, including in live exercises or deployments.
• Support integration tooling, CI/CD for cross-system components, and automated regression in SIL/HIL environments.
• Maintain Interface Control Documents and integration contracts between major platform components, and translate field/operational requirements into system constraints Core Engineering and architects can build against.
• Build observability into cross-system components (logging, tracing, metrics) to make the next debugging pass faster.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time debugging distributed, real-time, or multi-service systems in production.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and/or Python, with the ability to write production-quality software with architect-level supervision on system design.
• Experience with real-time or low-latency messaging/middleware (e.g., DDS, ROS/ROS2, ZeroMQ, MQTT, gRPC) in distributed or multi-agent contexts.
• Solid working knowledge of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, multicast, basic routing) sufficient to debug connectivity/performance issues and converse credibly with networking engineers.
• Working familiarity — conversational depth plus basic debugging, not specialist design work — with RF/wireless concepts (link quality, interference, basic link budget reasoning).
• Comfortable using basic hardware bench tools (multimeter, oscilloscope) to debug at the hardware/software boundary.
• Demonstrated ability to debug across layers — application, network, RF, and hardware-adjacent — and to know when to pull in a specialist versus solve it directly.
• Experience with Linux systems and command-line debugging tooling.
• U.S. Citizenship with the ability to obtain a security clearance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating or debugging systems in contested/denied conditions (jamming, intermittent links, degraded bandwidth).
• Experience with Linux-based or real-time systems in resource-constrained, embedded, or edge environments (embedded Linux, bare-metal, RTOS).
• Familiarity with containerization for edge deployment (Docker/K8s) and observability tooling (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, or similar).
• Experience with simulation, HIL/SIL pipelines, or sim-to-field validation workflows.
• Familiarity with security considerations in tactical comms or cross-domain solutions.
• Prior work in defense, aerospace, or other mission-critical/regulated environments.
• Experience authoring ICDs, requirements traceability, or MBSE artifacts.
• Exposure to tactical radios, MANET, or mesh networking in a support/integration capacity.

Skills & Attributes

• Comfortable being the generalist in the room — credible across software, network, RF, and hardware conversations without needing to be the deepest expert in any one.
• Strong ownership instinct; debugs to root cause rather than handing off at the first sign of unfamiliar territory.
• Results-oriented — thinks in terms of measurable system KPIs (latency, reliability, uptime), not just task completion.
• Clear written communicator — translates field/debugging findings into structured specs, crash reports, and feedback Core Engineering can act on.
• Operates well under a systems architect's supervision on unfamiliar scope, without needing constant direction.

What We Offer

• Hybrid work environment.
• Competitive compensation.
• Flexible PTO + federal holidays.
• 401(k).
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision benefits.
• Free One Medical membership.
• Growth Path at NODA.