Senior Principal Software Architect

Description

SAIC is seeking a Senior Principal Software Architect to join the Joint Range Extension (JRE) software development team. This is a remote role within the U.S.

JRE is a combat-proven datalink gateway that plays a vital role in the defense of the United States and our allies by extending the reach of tactical data across the battlespace and around the globe. As a Senior Principal Software Architect on the team, you’ll play a leading role in shaping JRE’s future.

Key Responsibilities:

Architecture Strategy and Design

• Collaborate with JRE’s chief software architect to define the architectural vision, strategy, and technical roadmap for JRE
• Contribute to leading the team in making high-level design decisions and technology selections, documenting trade-offs and rationale
• Produce and maintain architecture artifacts, including an architecture description, component design documentation, architecture diagrams (C4, DoDAF, UML), and architecture decision records (ADRs)
• Translate business requirements and product and program goals into technical designs that meet both functional and non-functional criteria
• Develop proofs of concept and prototypes to validate architectural choices

Standards, Governance, and Quality

• Evolve the architectural principles, patterns, and standards used for JRE
• Lead architecture and pull-request reviews, providing constructive feedback on designs and significant implementations
• Ensure JRE meets key quality attributes such as scalability, reliability, performance, security, maintainability, and operability
• Manage technical debt and inflation, strategically incorporating the remediation of legacy debt into the product roadmap

Collaboration and Leadership

• Partner with product management to align technical strategy with business goals
• Mentor and coach engineers on design patterns, systems thinking, and architectural reasoning
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to executives, peers, and non-technical stakeholders
• Contribute to interviewing and hiring decisions for engineering roles

Execution and Evolution

• Evaluate emerging technologies, frameworks, and tools; make recommendations that balance risk, cost, and time-to-value
• Guide large-scale modernization initiatives
• Support incident reviews and post-mortems where root causes touch architectural decisions

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

Technical Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering large-scale, mission-critical systems
• Experience effectively leading the design and architecture of multi-million-line codebases
• Experience leading significant architectural evolutions (e.g., monolith decomposition, major re-platforming)
• Fluency with domain-driven design; object-oriented, functional, and enterprise systems design patterns; software design principles; and refactoring techniques
• Proficiency with modern distributed systems patterns (APIs, messaging/event-driven, service boundaries, data consistency trade-offs)
• Deep experience with the Java platform; including fluency with Java, and familiarity with JVM languages such as Kotlin or Scala
• Experience with modern deployment practices for cloud and edge systems
• Security-by-design mindset and working knowledge of common threat models
• Knowledge of test automation principles and best practices

Leadership Qualifications

• Proven ability to lead and work collaboratively, and influence at all levels regardless of direct authority
• Growth mindset and a track record of elevating other engineers
• Demonstrated ability to gain the trust of others and elicit their highest level of contribution
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Credentials and Education

• Bachelor’s or higher degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field; relevant experience to be substituted in lieu of degree
• 15+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 5+ years in an architect or lead engineering capacity
• U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain a secret clearance or higher

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in the C5ISR domain, particularly with tactical data links, situational awareness, and command and control systems, or comparable mission-critical, high-reliability, near-real-time systems
• Knowledge of MIL-STDs such as 6016, 6017, 3011, 6020, 6040, and 2525; tactical terminals and radios such as MIDS JTRS, STT, AN/ARC, and AN/PRC; GPS and inertial navigation systems protocols such as NMEA 0183 and GPS-153; avionics standards such as ARINC 429 and 661; and industry security standards such as DISA STIGs, and NIST SP 800-171 and 800-207
• Experience with network programming, networking protocols, and the low-level processing of binary data
• Experience with native development with C and C++
• Active contributions to open source, technical writing, or speaking

Target salary range: $160,001 - $200,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.