Principal/Sr Principal Infrastructure Software Engineer

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: No relocation assistance available CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: Yes CLEARANCE TYPE: 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 Defense Systems is seeking Software Engineers to join the Global C2 Solutions Business Unit in Huntsville, Alabama. You will help design and implement containerization and virtualization strategies to migrate a mission‑critical command and control (C2) software. In this role, you will support the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) program on Agile Software Teams, working closely with software, systems, hardware and IT engineers to build robust, secure, and scalable software solutions that address complex logical and mathematical challenges in support of Global C2 missions. This position is ideal for engineers who enjoy hands‑on development, solving complex technical problems, and collaborating in a highly integrated, Agile environment. Responsibilities / Essential Functions • Design and implement containerization and virtualization strategies to migrate a large, complex software application to modern runtime environments. • Decompose the existing application into containerized services or components, defining appropriate images, runtimes, and resource allocations. • Develop and maintain container build artifacts (e.g., Dockerfiles, Helm charts) and virtual machine images, ensuring consistency, repeatability, and security. • Stand up and administer container orchestration and virtualization platforms (e.g., Kubernetes/OpenShift and VMware or similar) to host the application. • Optimize application performance, scalability, and reliability in containerized and virtualized environments, including tuning resource usage and networking. • Integrate containerized and virtualized components into CI/CD pipelines to automate build, test, deployment, and rollback processes. • Implement and maintain monitoring, logging, and alerting for containers, virtual machines, and supporting infrastructure. • Apply security best practices for container and VM workloads, including image scanning, access controls, patching, and configuration hardening. • Collaborate closely with software developers, system administrators, cybersecurity, and operations teams to plan and execute migration activities with minimal disruption. • Produce and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and configuration records to support operations, sustainment, and future enhancements. Basic Qualifications • Principal Software Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in a STEM field and at least 5 years of relevant experience; 3 years with a Master’s; 1 year with a PhD. • Senior Principal Software Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in a STEM field and at least 8 years of relevant experience; 6 years with a Master’s; 4 years with a PhD. • Active Secret Clearance. • CompTIA Security+ • Object-oriented software development experience in Java and C++. • Experience with modern configuration management and source control tools (e