Senior Systems Engineer

Location: Gaithersburg, MD • Full-Time Regular • Day shift • No travel • Relocation assistance available

About the role

Ennoble First is seeking an experienced and innovative Senior Systems Engineer to support the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. In this role, you will help design, integrate, and evolve mission-critical systems that enable GEOINT operations. Working alongside software engineers, cybersecurity professionals, Product Owners, Agile teams, and government stakeholders, you will transform mission needs into scalable, secure, and resilient technical solutions using modern systems engineering practices and DevSecOps principles.

Responsibilities

• Lead systems engineering activities across the full system lifecycle, including requirements analysis, architecture development, integration, testing, deployment, and sustainment.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and Agile development teams to refine features and translate mission needs into technical solutions.
• Develop and maintain system architectures, interface definitions, operational concepts (CONOPS), and technical documentation.
• Perform systems decomposition, functional analysis, allocation, and traceability using industry-standard systems engineering practices.
• Support backlog refinement, sprint planning, and technical roadmap development.
• Evaluate system performance, identify technical risks, and develop mitigation strategies.
• Coordinate integration across multiple development teams and external mission partners.
• Support verification and validation activities, ensuring requirements are fully tested and documented.
• Participate in design reviews, architecture reviews, technical interchange meetings, and customer briefings.
• Support DevSecOps initiatives and continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) processes.
• Ensure compliance with customer and Intelligence Community engineering standards and security requirements.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related STEM discipline and 8–12 years of prior relevant experience, or Master’s degree with 6–10 years of prior relevant experience.
• 8+ years of professional systems engineering experience.
• Experience supporting customer, Department of Defense, or Intelligence Community programs.
• CompTIA Security+ certification.
• INCOSE Systems Engineering Professional certification (ASEP, CSEP, or ESEP).
• Strong understanding of systems engineering principles and the systems development lifecycle.
• Experience working with Agile frameworks such as Scrum, SAFe, or Kanban.
• Experience with requirements management tools such as Jira, Confluence, or similar platforms.
• Knowledge of cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, or GovCloud.
• Experience with system integration, interface management, and enterprise architecture.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps pipelines and CI/CD tools.
• Ability to work effectively in a collaborative, cross-functional team environment.
• Active TS/SCI clearance with the ability to successfully complete a polygraph examination.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting NGA mission systems or GEOINT programs.
• Experience with Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and SysML.
• Familiarity with Cameo Systems Modeler or similar modeling tools.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and containerized applications.
• Knowledge of microservices architecture.
• Experience with REST APIs and distributed systems.
• SAFe Agilist, Scrum Master, or other Agile certification.
• Experience supporting cloud-native or hybrid cloud environments.

Pay

$135,000–$160,000