Principal/Sr Principal Infrastructure Software Engineer

About the role

• RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: No relocation assistance available
• CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: Yes
• CLEARANCE TYPE: Secret
• TRAVEL: Yes, 10% of the Time

About the role

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 Defense Systems is seeking Software Engineers to join the Global C2 Solutions Business Unit in Huntsville, Alabama. You will help design and implement containerization and virtualization strategies to migrate a mission‑critical command and control (C2) software.

In this role, you will support the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) program on Agile Software Teams, working closely with software, systems, hardware and IT engineers to build robust, secure, and scalable software solutions that address complex logical and mathematical challenges in support of Global C2 missions.

This position is ideal for engineers who enjoy hands‑on development, solving complex technical problems, and collaborating in a highly integrated, Agile environment.

Responsibilities / Essential Functions

• Design and implement containerization and virtualization strategies to migrate a large, complex software application to modern runtime environments.
• Decompose the existing application into containerized services or components, defining appropriate images, runtimes, and resource allocations.
• Develop and maintain container build artifacts (e.g., Dockerfiles, Helm charts) and virtual machine images, ensuring consistency, repeatability, and security.
• Stand up and administer container orchestration and virtualization platforms (e.g., Kubernetes/OpenShift and VMware or similar) to host the application.
• Optimize application performance, scalability, and reliability in containerized and virtualized environments, including tuning resource usage and networking.
• Integrate containerized and virtualized components into CI/CD pipelines to automate build, test, deployment, and rollback processes.
• Implement and maintain monitoring, logging, and alerting for containers, virtual machines, and supporting infrastructure.
• Apply security best practices for container and VM workloads, including image scanning, access controls, patching, and configuration hardening.
• Collaborate closely with software developers, system administrators, cybersecurity, and operations teams to plan and execute migration activities with minimal disruption.
• Produce and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and configuration records to support operations, sustainment, and future enhancements.

Basic Qualifications

• Principal Software Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in a STEM field and at least 5 years of relevant experience; 3 years with a Master’s; 1 year with a PhD.
• Senior Principal Software Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in a STEM field and at least 8 years of relevant experience; 6 years with a Master’s; 4 years with a PhD.
• Active Secret Clearance.
• CompTIA Security+
• Object-oriented software development experience in Java and C++.
• Experience with modern configuration management and source control tools (e.g., Git, GitLab).
• Experience with containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Podman).
• Experience orchestrating containers using Kubernetes or similar platforms (e.g., OpenShift, Rancher).
• Familiarity with creating, maintaining, and securing container images (e.g., Dockerfiles, image scanning, SBOMs).
• Experience with container registries (e.g., GitLab Container Registry, Nexus, Harbor, ECR/ACR/GCR).
• Experience with virtualization platforms (e.g., VMware vSphere/ESXi, KVM, VirtualBox, Hyper-V).
• Understanding of Linux system administration, including networking, storage, and security in virtualized and containerized environments.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code and deployment automation (e.g., Ansible, Terraform, Helm).
• Experience with monitoring and logging solutions for containers and virtual machines (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK).
• Strong experience with Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) concepts and implementation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Agile development using SAFe and Atlassian tools (Jira, Confluence).
• CI/CD experience in classified or highly controlled environments.
• Experience designing, implementing, and maintaining test bench and benchmarking CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience defining CI/CD requirements, user stories, and use cases in partnership with development and test teams
• Experience with collaborating with software developers, system administrators, cybersecurity, and operations teams.
• Experience supporting real-time or distributed systems using RTI/DDS publish/subscribe middleware.
• Experience with tactical data links and external interfaces such as MIL-STD-6016 (Link 16), Blue Force Tracker (BFT), IBS, ADS-B, or similar systems.

#HSVFall2026

Primary Level Salary Range

$108,800.00 - $163,200.00

Secondary Level Salary Range

$135,800.00 - $203,600.00

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.