MSS Developer - Falls Church

About the role

Agile Defense brings adaptive innovation to support the nation's most important missions through seamless integration of advanced technologies, elite minds, and unparalleled agility — leveraging a foundation of speed, flexibility, and ingenuity to strengthen and protect vital national interests.

Location: Falls Church, VA

Clearance: U.S. citizenship required. Active Secret clearance minimum; roles may require TS/SCI based on project assignment. Candidates must be able to obtain and maintain higher-level clearances.

Work environment: Onsite in a SCIF required.

Responsibilities

Build Mission-Critical Analytics and Applications

• Build and maintain operator-facing dashboards, applications, and decision surfaces aligned to J7 mission workflows
• Create intuitive, self-service capabilities that empower operators to explore data independently
• Build automated workflows that deliver timely insights to stakeholders across the directorate
• Ensure data accuracy and consistency across all MSS deliverables

Drive Hands-On Platform Engineering

• Develop and maintain data pipelines, ontology, and access controls on MSS and the underlying Palantir stack
• Integrate external data sources into a well-modeled data foundation
• Ensure AI/AIP workflows have a well-modeled data foundation and that model outputs are surfaced in operationally useful ways
• Partner with mission leaders to understand analytical needs and translate requirements into technical solutions

Enable Data-Driven Decision Making

• Create compelling data visualizations that communicate complex insights to diverse audiences
• Build interactive tools that allow operators to drill down into data and explore different scenarios
• Design alerting and monitoring systems that proactively identify mission opportunities and risks
• Collaborate with teams to establish KPIs and success metrics that drive mission performance

Optimize Platform Performance

• Develop efficient data models and query optimization strategies for fast, reliable reporting
• Implement caching and aggregation strategies to ensure optimal dashboard and application performance
• Build scalable MSS solutions that can handle growing data volumes and user bases
• Provide day-to-day operator support and escalate complex platform issues to senior engineers as appropriate

Foster Analytics Excellence

• Contribute reusable platform content — ontology patterns, dashboard templates, integration recipes — to support continuous curriculum refresh
• Document data sources, metrics definitions, and analytical methodologies for organizational knowledge
• Support validation of the FDE&T model for potential extension to additional Combatant Commands, Service components, and functional commands
• Stay current with MSS/Palantir technologies and advocate for new tools and approaches that improve mission analytics

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or a quantitative discipline; extensive Palantir experience will substitute
• 4+ years of software or data engineering experience (data analysis or data science experience considered), including 1.5+ years hands-on with Palantir Foundry, Gotham, AIP, or MSS
• Demonstrated experience building dashboards, applications, or pipelines for operational end users
• Working proficiency in ontology design, pipeline authoring using PySpark, Code Repositories, or Pipeline Builder
• Active U.S. government security clearance

Qualifications

• Prior Palantir FDE/FDSE or comparable customer-embedded role
• Hands-on MSS experience
• AIP agent or large language model workflow exposure
• Familiarity with DoD data environments and classified networks
• Prior Combatant Command support
• Solid Python and SQL skills with familiarity in JavaScript/TypeScript

Culture

Agile Defense's culture is defined by the 6Hs — values that guide everything we do:

• Happy — Be Infectious. Happiness multiplies and creates a positive, connected environment where motivation and satisfaction have an outsized effect.
• Helpful — Be Supportive. The foundation of teamwork, resulting in a supportive atmosphere where collaboration flourishes and collective success is celebrated.
• Honest — Be Trustworthy. Honesty serves as our compass, ensuring transparent communication and ethical conduct.
• Humble — Be Grounded. Success is not achieved alone; humility ensures mutual respect, open communication, and willingness to learn.
• Hungry — Be Eager. Hunger for excellence drives an insatiable appetite for innovation and continuous improvement.
• Hustle — Be Driven. Relentless work ethic, committed to going above and beyond to advance the mission and achieve success.