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Principal Software Architect

Arlington, VA

About the Team 

STR’s Analytics division researches and develops advanced analytics and machine learning-based solutions to solve challenging problems related to national security. Our team consists of passionate and motivated engineers with advanced degrees in engineering, computer science, mathematics, and data science, who are seeking opportunities to use their deep technical knowledge and creativity to tackle some of the hardest problems that our customers face. Our projects span multiple different data modalities and incorporate advanced algorithms, deep learning, and statistical techniques to uncover patterns in social media, structured and unstructured text, time series, geospatial, and imagery data, and must operate under challenging constraints not typically found in the commercial world. The tools and technologies we develop have real world impact and US Government analysts use them to extract and enrich intelligence information around the globe. 

The Role 

We are looking for a leader who is passionate about collaborating with high-performance teams to solve unique national security challenges with novel technologies. As a Principal Software Architect, you will leverage your skills in systems and software development to operationalize advanced statistical machine learning algorithms and support production-level systems. You will work closely with other software engineers and researchers – teammates from both STR and subcontractors – to design cutting-edge solutions to challenging problems impacting national security including classification, anomaly detection, forecasting, and much more. You will also interact with customers to understand requirements and use cases and apply feedback to respond to their most critical problems. 

Due to the nature of our work, applicants should expect to primarily work onsite, e.g., ~75% time at the customer site, and the rest of the time at STR’s Arlington, VA office:  the split work location is designed to support strong engagement with our customers, our on-site team members, and STR’s technical and business operations teams in Arlington, VA and Woburn, MA. This role will take advantage of STR’s flexible, hybrid environment – when the work does not require use of STR’s facilities, you are welcome to work remotely. 

What You Will Do: 

  • Lead an active, distributed team of STR and subcontractor engineers in creating and maintaining system infrastructure, including data pipeline architecture, algorithm execution, storage, distribution and access 
  • Engage directly with end users, build strong customer relationships, and constantly seek to apply new technology to address mission requirements 
  • Empower the designers, engineers, and scientists to act with a meaningful degree of autonomy by developing and clearly communicating a unifying product vision and strategy – again, both STR employees and our subcontractors 
  • Understand all stakeholders, the constraints in which those stakeholders operate, and create customer solutions that work within the constraints of the business 
  • Architect and implement capabilities for integrating component technologies and orchestrating overall workflows 
  • Identify, design, and implement internal process improvements: automating manual processes, optimizing data delivery, re-designing infrastructure for greater scalability, etc. 
  • Monitor data for changes that could significantly impact system performance 
  • Develop and execute plans to mitigate issues and maximize system uptime, and perform testing to ensure system function and performance 

Who You Are: 

  • Motivated collaborator who is looking for the opportunity to work with a team of high-end researchers and engineers to develop and deploy novel machine learning solutions for real mission impact 
  • Experience supporting and working within a large, cross-functional, distributed team 
  • Aptitude for collaborating with stakeholders across a wide range of technical comfort levels 
  • Experience in guiding technical projects to translate mission needs into production software while identifying and tracking product risk 
  • Experience in leading and directing development initiatives from inception to functional prototypes to production-level systems 
  • Demonstrated success decomposing a problem into addressable component parts 
  • Experience performing root cause analysis on internal and external processes to troubleshoot issues and identify opportunities for improvement 
  • Demonstrated experience integrating component technologies and orchestrating component workflows 
  • Experience with software delivery and containerization: e.g. Docker, Kubernetes 
  • Proficiency with one or more high-level programming languages, like Python 
  • Experience with AWS cloud services: e.g EC2, S3, EKS, EMR, RDS, Redshift 
  • Working knowledge of Linux Operating System and shell scripting 
  • 7+ years industry experience working with large integrated systems 
  • Active Security Clearance, for which U.S. citizenship is needed by U.S. Government

Even Better (you should have several of these, but all of them are not required): 

  • Prior military experience with emphasis on intelligence and delivering analytic products 
  • Active TS/SCI security clearance with CI poly  
  • Demonstrated experience with DevSecOps pipelines and SAFe Agile 
  • History of manipulating, processing and extracting value from large, disconnected datasets 
  • Experience with development of APIs (e.g., REST), access control, and auditing 
  • Experience with message queuing, stream processing, and highly scalable ‘big data’ data stores 
  • Experience developing build processes supporting data transformation, data structures, metadata, dependency and workload management 
  • Experience building and optimizing ‘big data’ data pipelines, architectures and data sets 
  • Advanced working SQL knowledge and experience working with relational databases, query authoring (SQL) as well as working familiarity with a variety of databases 
  • Experience using the following software/tools: 
    • Big Data tools: e.g. Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, ElasticSearch 
    • AWS: Athena, RDB, AWS credentials from Cloud Practitioner to Solutions Architect 
    • Data Lakes: e.g. Delta Lake, Apache Hudi, Apache Iceberg 
    • Distributed SQL interfaces: e.g. Apache Hive, Presto/Trino, Spark 
    • Data pipeline and workflow management tools: e.g Luigi, Airflow 
    • Dashboard frontends: e.g. Grafana, Kibana 
    • Relational SQL and NoSQL databases: e.g. Postgres, Cassandra 
    • Stream-processing systems: e.g. Storm, Spark-Streaming, etc. 
    • Containerization: e.g. Docker 
    • Possession of SAFe Agile, Security+, or other certifications, or willingness to get them 

STR is a growing technology company with locations near Boston, MA, Arlington, VA, near Dayton, OH, Melbourne, FL, and Carlsbad, CA. We specialize in advanced research and development for defense, intelligence, and national security in: cyber; next generation sensors, radar, sonar, communications, and electronic warfare; and artificial intelligence algorithms and analytics to make sense of the complexity that is exploding around us.

STR is committed to creating a collaborative learning environment that supports deep technical understanding and recognizes the contributions and achievements of all team members. Our work is challenging, and we go home at night knowing that we pushed the envelope of technology and made the world safer.

STR is not just any company. Our people, culture, and attitude along with their unique set of skills, experiences, and perspectives put us on a trajectory to change the world. We can't do it alone, though - we need fellow trailblazers. If you are one, join our team and help to keep our society safe! Visit us at www.str.us for more info.


STR is an equal opportunity employer. We are fully dedicated to hiring the most qualified candidate regardless of race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation and pregnancy), marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

If you need a reasonable accommodation for any portion of the employment process, email us at appassist@str.us and provide your contact info.

Pursuant to applicable federal law and regulations, positions at STR require employees to obtain national security clearances and satisfy the requirements for compliance with export control and other applicable laws.

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