The Data Software Engineer will be a key technical contributor responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the data-exchange infrastructure that connects the company's simulation, analytics, and digital-engineering ecosystems. This role blends backend engineering, high-performance data processing, and API-driven integration to ensure that data flows across services are coherent, scalable, secure, and aligned with mission and business objectives. You will develop robust APIs, optimize schemas across relational and graph databases, implement reliable data-access layers, and collaborate closely with frontend, simulation, systems engineering, and DevOps teams to define clean integration boundaries. This position plays a central role in enabling digital-thread workflows, high-throughput data services, and mission-critical analytics pipelines within regulated aerospace and defense environments.

Major Responsibilities

• Design and maintain data-exchange infrastructure connecting simulation, analytics, and digital-engineering systems.
• Develop and optimize APIs including REST and GraphQL interfaces with strong schema governance.
• Implement robust data-access layers with indexing, query optimization, and model governance for evolving data domains.
• Build high-performance backend services in Python, C++, or Rust.
• Integrate and optimize database schemas across relational, graph, and document stores.
• Ensure reliability and observability through logging, metrics, tracing, error handling, and automated testing.
• Collaborate across engineering teams to define clean integration boundaries and support mission-critical workflows.
• Support secure data operations including authentication, authorization, secrets management, and encryption.
• Contribute to CI/CD integration and partner with DevOps on build, deploy, and runtime environments.

Ideal Experience

• STEM foundation - Bachelor's degree in CS, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• Backend & data-service development - 1-5 years building backend systems, APIs, and data-driven services.
• API design expertise - Experience designing REST/GraphQL interfaces, schemas, and integration patterns.
• High-performance backend programming - Proficiency in Python, C++, or Rust.
• Database schema & modeling - Experience with PostgreSQL, Neo4j, or document databases.
• Data-access architecture - Ability to design indexing strategies, query paths, and governance models.
• Service reliability fundamentals - Observability, error handling, contract validation, and automated testing.
• API & data security - Authentication, authorization, secrets management, and encryption.
• CI/CD integration - Experience integrating backend services into CI/CD pipelines.
• Cross-functional collaboration - Ability to work with frontend, simulation, systems, and DevOps teams.
• Security eligibility - U.S. Citizen; able to obtain and maintain DoD Secret clearance (TS/SCI preferred).

Desired Skills

• Multi-protocol API development - REST, gRPC, SOAP, GraphQL.
• Graph-based data modeling - Knowledge of metadata lineage and digital-thread architectures.
• High-throughput data APIs - Real-time APIs, streaming systems, binary formats, and performance tuning.
• HPC-adjacent workflows - Simulation data, scientific computation, or data-dense analytics.
• Microservice architectures - Containerized deployments and service-to-service communication.
• API design for diverse consumers - Interfaces for UIs, pipelines, and automated systems.
• Regulated industry exposure - Aerospace, defense, or other high-integrity domains.
• Open-source contributions - Backend frameworks, API libraries, or data-modeling tools.

Grow with us as we innovate the next generation capabilities for a new era of space exploration! We offer a highly competitive benefits package along with a commitment to our core values of Integrity, Innovation, Impact, Inclusion, and Excellence.

Don't meet every single requirement above? No worries. We want people who can grow, collaborate and build a stronger team. We strive to build a diverse and inclusive culture, so if you're excited about this job posting, we encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.