Principal Engineer, Software Architect (R4562)

Job description

Job responsibilities

• Define and evolve the system‑wide software architecture for XBAT, spanning airborne vehicle, ground station, and autonomy layers.
• Translate safety and security goals into technical requirements, standards, and design patterns that guide engineers across multiple software teams.
• Ensure architecture supports safety‑critical and cyber‑relevant workflows. This includes formalizing architecture decisions, traceability, and compliance pathways appropriate for advanced airborne systems.
• Drive cross‑team alignment on APIs, data flows, fault handling, verification strategy, and risk management so mission, vehicle, and autonomy components integrate cleanly.
• Partner with engineering leadership, system architects, and validation teams to balance innovation speed with rigorous assurance practices.
• Set technical direction for long‑term scalability: modularity, maintainability, testability, and support for future capability growth or certification needs.
• Mentor senior engineers and architects, raising the bar for design rigor, documentation quality, and architectural judgment across the organization.
• Produce and maintain architecture artifacts: high‑level system diagrams, component interfaces, data models, risk analyses, and design rationales.

Job requirements

• Deep expertise in software architecture for complex, multi‑domain systems—ideally aerospace, defense, autonomous systems, or similarly safety‑critical fields.
• Proven track record designing and delivering production software that must satisfy stringent safety, security, or mission assurance requirements.
• Strong systems thinking: able to navigate tradeoffs across performance, latency, reliability, testability, and certification or compliance considerations.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to convey architecture vision and rationale to engineers, program leads, and stakeholders.
• Experience driving architecture adoption and discipline across multiple teams, not just authoring designs in isolation.
• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace, or a closely related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Ability to obtain a S//SAR level security clearance desired.
• Familiarity with aerospace software assurance frameworks or standards that guide high‑assurance airborne software development.