Senior Agentic Software Engineer

The MITRE Corporation

$129K — $193K *
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years of experience with a Bachelor's degree or 3 years with a Master's degree; PhD candidates must have relevant experience.
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals with proficiency in Python, secure coding, and automated testing.
  • Hands-on experience with agentic/AI-assisted development tools and their integration into the development lifecycle.
  • Experience defining guardrails for AI-enablement in engineering practices.
  • Knowledge in establishing evaluation and quality practices for AI-generated outputs, including automated checks and performance standards.
  • Demonstrated leadership skills in mentoring and advising on best practices and responsible adoption of technology.

Responsibilities

  • Design and build mission-focused software and data platforms using agentic development techniques.
  • Rapidly prototype and mature mission capabilities into production-grade systems.
  • Define and enforce guardrails for AI-assisted engineering to ensure compliance and safety.
  • Automate DevSecOps and CI/CD processes with AI-aware controls for secure, repeatable releases.
  • Architect and operate distributed cloud systems with focus on performance and resilience.
  • Produce documentation and compliance evidence for AI-assisted engineering processes.

Benefits

  • Professional development opportunities to enhance your skills and career trajectory.
  • Culture of innovation that values flexibility, collaboration, and growth.
  • Meaningful work contributing to national security and public welfare.
Full Job Description
Department Summary:

Do you want to engineer software systems that contribute to solving our nation's most critical problems? Do you want to work alongside engineers, scientists, and domain specialists that are experts in their fields? Are you passionate about best practices for delivering the highest quality software solutions?

We're making a difference every day-working for a safer, healthier, and more secure nation and world.

At MITRE, you'll apply your skills and experience to solve tangible, high-impact challenges facing our nation. You'll contribute to diverse projects in support of our government sponsors while benefiting from meaningful learning and growth opportunities. Our workplace reflects our values: we invest in your development so you can build a long-term career here. Join us for mission-driven work, competitive benefits, exceptional professional development, and a culture of innovation that values flexibility, collaboration, and career growth.

Roles & Responsibilities:

MITRE is seeking a Senior Agentic Software Engineer to design, build, secure, and operate mission-focused software systems and data platforms using state-of-the-art agentic and AI-enabled software development techniques. In this role, you'll apply modern tools and practices to develop prototypes and field-ready capabilities, advise sponsors on effective adoption, and help establish guidance, best practices, and guardrails for responsible use. You'll deliver features and technical solutions, shape system architecture and engineering process improvements, and lead both sustained program execution and rapid response mission needs.

The applicant should be prepared to work across multiple domain areas and to support a mix of standard program work and urgent, high-impact enablement tasks as organizational priorities evolve. Areas of engagement may include
  • Design, develop, test, and deploy mission software and data platforms using agentic/AI-assisted workflows with clear human accountability and review
  • Stand up and operate agentic development toolchains (code/test/review agents, copilots, automation bots) integrated into standard engineering practices
  • Rapidly prototype mission capabilities with agentic methods and mature them into production-grade systems (security, reliability, scalability, observability)
  • Define, implement, and enforce guardrails for agentic engineering (approved tools/models, data handling, secrets, provenance, auditability, safe prompting)
  • Establish evaluation and quality gates for AI-generated artifacts (tests, static/security analysis, coding standards, CI checks, acceptance criteria)
  • Architect, build, and operate distributed cloud systems (AWS/multi-cloud) using agentic techniques to manage performance, resilience, cost, and troubleshooting
  • Design and integrate APIs, backend services, and data flows; build and operate data pipelines and orchestration where applicable
  • Automate DevSecOps and CI/CD with AI-aware controls (supply-chain security, dependency/container/IaC scanning, SAST/DAST, policy-as-code) and repeatable releases
  • Produce and maintain documentation, runbooks, and compliance-ready evidence for AI-assisted engineering, including observability integrations (e.g., Splunk)


Basic Qualifications:
  • Typically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 3 years and a Master's degree; or a PhD with relevant experience who can immediately contribute to this job step
  • Entrepreneurial, innovative, and collaborative spirit and the curiosity to explore and push the boundaries of software development and software solutions
  • Strong software engineering fundamentals and Python proficiency, including secure coding, code review, automated testing, and maintainable design patterns
  • Hands-on experience using agentic/AI-assisted development tools (e.g., copilot, code agents, test generation, PR review automation) and integrating them into the Software Development Life Cycle
  • Experience designing guardrails for AI-enabled engineering (tool/model selection, prompt/context hygiene, secrets handling, provenance, auditability, and policy/compliance constraints)
  • Experience establishing quality/evaluation practices for AI-generated outputs (automated checks, unit/integration tests, static/security analysis, and human-in-the-loop review standards)
  • Leadership/enablement skills: mentoring, setting engineering standards, and advising stakeholders/customers on responsible adoption and change management
  • Eligible to obtain and maintain a Secret clearance
  • Per the U.S. Government's eligibility requirements, you must be a U.S Citizen to be considered for a security clearance.
  • This position requires a minimum of 50% hybrid on-site


Preferred Qualifications:
  • Advanced degree within technical discipline; Software Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Mathematics, etc.
  • Active Top-Secret clearance preferred
  • Proven experience building, deploying and operating LLM/agent systems (e.g., RAG, tool/function calling, orchestration frameworks) in production, including constrained/classified environments
  • Mature evaluation and quality practices for LLMs/agents (e.g., golden sets, regression benchmarking, judge models; hallucination/jailbreak resistance and task success metrics)
  • Platform engineering/DevSecOps expertise: CI/CD delivery platforms, artifact management, and software supply-chain/provenance controls (e.g., SBOMs, signing/attestation/SLSA, policy-as-code)
  • Cloud-native operations depth across Kubernetes and IaC/multi-cloud, with strong observability (tracing/logs/agent telemetry, audit logging/Splunk) and MLOps/model serving (hosting, gatewaying, rate/cost controls, monitoring)


This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):
None

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):
Secret

Salary compensation range and midpoint:
$129,200 - $161,500 - $193,800 Annual

Work Location Type:
Hybrid

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability.

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