Description
We are seeking a talented Lead Software Engineer to work onsite in our Huntsville, AL office in support of the IFPC program, developing software for critical counter-UAS and missile defense solutions.
As a Lead Software Engineer, you will serve as the team's technical lead and drive the adoption of AI-assisted software engineering practices. You will develop production software in C++ and Python in a Linux environment for counter-UAS and missile defense systems within a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) environment.
Primary Responsibilities:
- Serve as the technical lead and design authority for the IFPC Agentic AI software development improvement software team
- Champion and operationalize agentic AI-assisted software development across the team
- Coach and upskill engineers in the effective use of AI coding assistants
- Adapt commercial agentic-AI coding practices to a secure, restricted, or air-gapped environment
- Develop production software in C++ and Python in a Linux environment
- Debug and troubleshoot software in a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HWIL) and Software-in-the-loop (SWIL) setting
- Establish and enforce engineering and coding standards
- Collaborate across systems, electrical, test, and cybersecurity teams
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline
- 12+ years of professional software development experience
- Recent, substantial, hands-on experience building real software with current-generation agentic AI coding assistants
- Demonstrated ability to coach and mentor engineers and to lead a software team as a technical lead
- Strong, current proficiency in C++ and Python
- Experience across the full software lifecycle, including peer reviews, automated testing, and CI/CD
- Experience working within an Agile / SAFe environment
- Experience with tools such as Jira and GitLab
- Ability to adapt modern AI-assisted development workflows to security-constrained, restricted, or disconnected environments
- Currently living in Huntsville, AL or willing to relocate
- U.S. Citizen with the ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance
Preferred Qualifications:
- Deep, hands-on expertise with specific agentic AI coding tools
- Experience building AI enablement assets
- Experience measuring and driving AI developer-productivity impact
- Experience with self-hosted / on-prem large language models and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) over codebases
- Familiarity with AI governance and safety for software teams
- Commercial / private-sector software experience
- Counter-UAS, missile defense, or other mission-system domain experience
- Real-time / embedded C++ and experience troubleshooting/testing software in an HWIL environment
- Experience with Buildroot and VMware; network programming (UDP/TCP) and analysis tools such as Wireshark
- Experience supporting and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, and familiarity with DoD acquisition processes and methods