JUNIOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

About the role

Igniters operate in the world’s most demanding environment. They are self‑motivated, mission‑driven, and relentless in solving the Warfighters’ hardest problems. The team moves fast, thinks differently, and executes with precision to tackle high‑stakes challenges across AI/ML, space and missile defense intelligence, EMSO, advanced analytics, and programmatic domains. As an employee‑owned SDVOSB headquartered in Huntsville, AL, Ignite delivers mission‑critical impact for the Army, Air Force, Space Force, MDA, NASA, DIA, and FBI. This Junior Software Developer position will be on‑site in Dayton, Ohio.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain Python‑based applications, services, and automation tools.
• Build and integrate MCP servers, tools, resources, and client applications.
• Support agentic workflows that use large language models to select tools, perform multi‑step tasks, and process results.
• Integrate applications with OpenAI‑compatible APIs and locally hosted language models.
• Create configuration‑driven tools and workflows with minimal hard‑coded behavior.
• Develop REST APIs and backend services for AI‑enabled applications.
• Write unit tests, troubleshoot software issues, and maintain technical documentation.
• Use Git‑based development processes, code reviews, and continuous integration.
• Assist with containerizing and deploying applications in offline or restricted environments.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Mathematics, Physics, or a related technical field.
• Experience developing software in Python through coursework, internships, personal projects, or professional work.
• Familiarity with object‑oriented programming, APIs, JSON, and asynchronous programming.
• Basic understanding of large language models, prompt engineering, tool calling, or agentic application patterns.
• Experience using Git or another version‑control system.
• Ability to communicate technical information and work effectively as part of a development team.
• U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.

Skills

• Experience with Model Context Protocol, FastMCP, or the official MCP Python SDK.
• Experience with OpenAI SDK or other OpenAI‑compatible APIs.
• Experience with LangGraph, LangChain, Agno, Semantic Kernel, or similar agent frameworks.
• Experience with FastAPI, Pydantic, HTTPX, asyncio, and Uvicorn.
• Experience with Pytest and automated software testing.
• Experience with Docker and containerized development.
• Experience with retrieval‑augmented generation, embeddings, or vector databases.
• Experience with local or offline large language model deployment.
• Experience with Linux development environments and basic command‑line tools.