Principal / Sr Principal Engineer Software
United States-California-San Diego · United States-California-El Segundo$114k–$213kPosted Jul 16, 2026
RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: Relocation assistance may be available
CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: Yes
CLEARANCE TYPE: Top Secret
TRAVEL: Yes, 10% of the Time
## Description
At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.
Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems Sector has an opening for a Principal/Sr Principal Engineer Software onsite in Rancho Bernardo or El Segundo, California
# Accomplish
Join our Research and Advanced Design (R&AD) Division working on exciting new next generation technologies and their rapid deployment to end users.
Key Responsibilities.:
* Engineer enterprise solutions that align with best practices to support mission critical objectives.
* Work on 1-3 mid- to large-scale projects concurrently, assigned from program and internal leadership.
* Participate in regular project design and incremental status meetings.
* Collaborate with different teams across the program to discuss, analyze or resolve usability issues and work on projects.
* Provide effective communication across multi-functional teams, stakeholders and end-users.
# Succeed
The individual we seek will be self-motivated, proactive, goal-oriented to help us grow our services, become even better at what we do and will possess the following qualifications.
**This role may be filled at either the Principal Software Engineer or a Sr. Principal Software Engineer level based on the qualifications below.**
Basic Qualifications:
* Principal Software Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in a Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) discipline from an accredited university and 5 years of relevant engineering experience OR Master’s degree in a STEM discipline from an accredited university and 3 years of relevant engineering experience; or a PhD and 1 year of experience in a related field.
* Sr Principal Software Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline from an accredited university and 8 years of relevant experience OR Master’s degree in a STEM discipline from an accredited university and 6 years of relevant experience; or a PhD and 4 years of experience in a related field.
* Your ability to transfer and maintain the final adjudicated Top Secret clearance (Must be in-scope or enrolled in Continuous Evaluation) and any program access(es) required for the position within a reasonable period of time, as determined by the Company.
* Ability to obtain Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) and Special Program Access (SAP).
* Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP): Proficiency with Spring Integration or Apache Camel to build robust adapters and message routers.
* Java 21+ Proficiency, microservice development and front-end interfaces
* Experience with Observability technologies, health indicators, and dashboarding including Prometheus and Grafana
* Experience with Apache Niagara Files (NiFi)
* Deep knowledge of data flow technologies and networking, including UDP, TCP, and hybrid protocols
* Hybrid S3 Integration: Ability to develop in Java 21+ using the AWS SDK for Java v2 for scenarios where a standalone microservice is more performant than a NiFi processor.
* Dashboard Development:
* Backend: Java 21+/Spring Boot service with a time-series or document-oriented store (e.g.,...