Senior Principal Software Engineer at General Dynamics Mission Systems in Maryland
- Company: General Dynamics Mission Systems
- Location: Maryland
- Posted: Sep 17, 2026
- Type: Full-time
- Experience: 10+ years
Overview
We encourage you to apply if you have any of these preferred skills or experiences: Demonstrated ownership of the full software development lifecycle Proven technical leadership of software engineers Track record of taking software from prototype/R&D maturity to production-quality, maintainable, del…
Responsibilities
- We encourage you to apply if you have any of these preferred skills or experiences:
- Demonstrated ownership of the full software development lifecycle
- Proven technical leadership of software engineers
- Track record of taking software from prototype/R&D maturity to production-quality, maintainable, deliverable products
- Strong grounding in software engineering best practices (testing, version control, design review, documentation, technical debt management)
- Developing C2, device management, or platform control software for custom/proprietary hardware
- Designing software interfaces to FPGA-based systems or bespoke embedded hardware
- Stateful system design: state machines, operational sequencing, configuration management, and fault handling
- Building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines
- Kubernetes administration and operations, including authoring Helm charts for application packaging and deployment
- Containerization technologies (containerd, Docker, Podman)
- Enterprise software design principles: API design, service-oriented architecture, modular/layered system design
- Embedded software development in a Linux environment
Requirements
- EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS: Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering, or related Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics field, plus a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience; or Master's degree, plus 8 years relevant experience.
- CLEARANCE REQUIREMENTS: Ability to obtain a Department of Defense TS/SCI security clearance is required at time of hire. Applicants selected will be subject to a U.S. Government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information. Due to the nature of work performed within our facilities, U.S. citizenship is required.
- Experience with optical, RF, or other communication system modem hardware
- Familiarity with hardware-software co-design workflows and FPGA integration patterns
- Track record of driving software platform reuse across multiple programs or product lines
- Experience standing up development environments, toolchains, and engineering infrastructure for small-to-mid-size teams
- Experience applying AI/ML tools to accelerate engineering workflows
- Creative thinker with demonstrated success leading the software development life cycle
- Commitment to growing and developing others, building long-term subject matter experts, not just executing on current contracts
- Exceptional communication skills with the capacity to coordinate across multidisciplinary hardware and software teams
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) server development and AI-tooling integration
Skills
Required
- U.S. citizenship
Preferred
- Building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines
Benefits
- An exciting career path with opportunities for continuous learning and development.
- Research oriented work, alongside award winning teams developing practical solutions for our nation’s security
- Flexible schedules with every other Friday off work, if desired (9/80 schedule)
- Competitive benefits, including 401k matching, flex time off, paid parental leave, healthcare benefits, health & wellness programs, employee resource and social groups, and more
- See more at gdmissionsystems.com/careers/why-work-for-us/benefits