Lead Software Engineer

Basic Qualifications

Requires a Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering, or a related Science, Engineering or Mathematics field. Also requires 5+ years of job-related experience, or a Master's degree plus 3 years of job-related experience. Agile experience preferred.

CLEARANCE REQUIREMENTS: Department of Defense Secret security clearance obtainable within reasonable time based on requirements. 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.

Responsibilities for this Position

ROLE AND POSITION OBJECTIVES:

As the NWS Lead Software Engineer for General Dynamics Mission Systems, you will provide technical leadership for a frontend or backend software team supporting a complex, distributed tactical system. You will work across software, systems, hardware, test, and configuration-management disciplines to mature the product, improve development practices, and deliver scalable capabilities.

This role requires an engineer who can lead technical execution while remaining hands-on with architecture, implementation, reviews, planning, and mentoring. The selected candidate will help guide the team’s transition toward memory-safe and type-safe technologies, including Go for new development and JavaScript for existing applications.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead for a software team, providing technical direction, mentoring, code reviews, and implementation support.
• Break down features into well-defined, testable tasks aligned with product and subsystem design boundaries.
• Partner with the Product Owner, Scrum Master, program leadership, systems engineering, and SC&I to plan work, manage priorities, and align with coding and development standards.
• Support Agile execution, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, technical estimation, retrospectives, and delivery tracking.
• Develop, review, and maintain technical artifacts, including test plans, user manuals, administrator manuals, design documentation, and software-development documentation.
• Support financial and program-planning activities, including COCOMO estimates, Basis of Estimate (BOE) inputs, and Software Bill of Materials (SW BOM) development.
• Conduct and oversee code reviews, ensuring changes meet quality, security, maintainability, testability, and Definition-of-Done expectations.
• Assess and improve team maturity, code maturity, codebase size and stabilization trends, development efficiency, and scalability across a distributed environment supporting 3,000+ endpoints.
• Help mature CI/CD and DevSecOps capabilities, including automated unit testing, code-quality analysis, configuration management, and repeatable production builds.
• Establish, maintain, or support test beds on SWFPAC.
• Identify technical risks, dependencies, and architectural concerns early; communicate options, tradeoffs, and recommendations to leadership.
• Mentor existing technical leadership and individual contributors, helping build sustainable team capability and knowledge transfer.

Backend Lead Focus Areas

The Backend Lead will additionally support:

• Backend architecture, database design, and data-model development.
• Middleware and Data Distribution Service (DDS) integration, including evaluation of Rust compatibility with RTI DDS.
• Embedded software and firmware-adjacent development, including FreeRTOS and TCP/IP interfaces, as applicable.
• Containerization, virtualization, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment architecture.
• Migration and adoption of memory-safe/type-safe technologies, particularly Go and Rust where appropriate.
• Build and release management, including Git-based merge, build, and configuration-management workflows.

Frontend Lead Focus Areas

The Frontend Lead will additionally support:

• Frontend architecture, legacy application knowledge, software licensing awareness, and full-system/subsystem interface understanding.
• Feature decomposition and planning based on encapsulation of product functions and subsystem design.
• Frontend development standards, component design, usability considerations, and integration with backend services.
• Product Owner responsibilities for an Agile team, including backlog prioritization, acceptance criteria, stakeholder coordination, and workforce oversight.
• Knowledge-management and training plans to help engineers develop lead-level capability and confirm understanding of assigned work.

Preferred Skills and Experience

We encourage you to apply if you have experience with:

• Leading, or serving as the deputy/backup lead for, delivery of a mature tactical, mission, or strategic software system.
• Software architecture, technical planning, feature decomposition, and system-level design.
• Frontend and/or backend development in distributed, multi-component systems.
• Go, Rust, JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, Java, C/C++, or other memory-safe/type-safe programming languages.
• Database design, data modeling, SQL, and backend-service development.
• Object-oriented software design and modern software-design principles.
• Data Distribution Service (DDS), middleware integration, and RTI DDS.
• Embedded software development, FreeRTOS, TCP/IP, and firmware-adjacent interfaces.
• Linux development or administration.
• Docker, Kubernetes, containerization, virtualization, and deployment automation.
• CI/CD, DevSecOps, automated testing, static analysis, production builds, and configuration management.
• Git, GitLab, source-control workflows, and merge/review practices.
• Software requirements decomposition; preliminary and critical design; implementation and unit testing; and requirements-based testing.
• Factory, hardware, or integration-test environments.
• Agile delivery, Product Owner responsibilities, or SAFe Agile Product Owner/Product Manager practices.

What Sets You Apart

• Strong technical judgment and the ability to guide engineers through complex or ambiguous technical decisions.
• Demonstrated ability to balance hands-on engineering work with team leadership, mentoring, planning, and stakeholder communication.
• Experience improving engineering processes, workflows, code quality, and automation in an established product environment.
• Ability to communicate technical risks, tradeoffs, estimates, and recommendations clearly to both technical and program stakeholders.
• Commitment to high-quality, maintainable, secure, and scalable software.
• Ability to lead a developing team, create clarity around expectations, and foster a collaborative and accountable engineering culture.
• Willingness to take reasonable, managed risks while maintaining disciplined engineering, testing, and configuration-management practices

Workplace Options:This position is primarily on-site with opportunities for Hybrid work/Flex as allowable.While on-site, you will be a part of the GDMS Pittsfield, Massachusetts Engineering Team.

#LI-Hybrid

Salary Note

This estimate represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors (geographic location, etc.). Actual pay may vary. This job posting will remain open until the position is filled.

Combined Salary Range

USD $110,175.00 - USD $122,225.00 /Yr.

Company Overview

General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) engineers a diverse portfolio of high technology solutions, products and services that enable customers to successfully execute missions across all domains of operation. With a global team of 12,000+ top professionals, we partner with the best in industry to expand the bounds of innovation in the defense and scientific arenas. Given the nature of our work and who we are, we value trust, honesty, alignment and transparency. We offer highly competitive benefits and pride ourselves in being a great place to work with a shared sense of purpose. You will also enjoy a flexible work environment where contributions are recognized and rewarded. If who we are and what we do resonates with you, we invite you to join our high-performance team!

Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans