Staff Systems Engineer

Duties/Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership on high-priority initiatives, working across teams to drive projects to completion.
• Navigate ambiguous problem spaces, define technical approaches, and make pragmatic tradeoffs between speed, quality, and scope.
• Design and implement systems architecture that connects customer endpoints, sensors, and external systems to our platform.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, and customer stakeholders to translate business needs into working solutions.
• Identify technical risks early and develop mitigation strategies.
• Support teams across the organization by providing guidance, clearing technical obstacles, and contributing where needed.
• Communicate technical decisions and tradeoffs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ensure successful handoffs and knowledge transfer as projects transition to long-term ownership.

Required Skills/Abilities

• 10+ years of systems engineering experience.
• 8+ years of experience in federated data architecture design for defense, national security, or government environments, including demonstrated experience with canonical data model development and ICD authoring.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field.
• Ability to travel internationally up to 50% of the time, including long-haul flights.
• Track record of delivering results in fast-paced environments with competing priorities and evolving requirements.
• Familiarity in at least one modern typed language (e.g., TypeScript, Go, Rust, Kotlin, C#) and ability to pick up new languages quickly.
• Strong experience with API development, data modeling, and system integration patterns.
• Experience building and operating production systems with high reliability requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently, make sound decisions with incomplete information, and drive to resolution.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills across distributed, cross-functional teams.
• Support Orbis’ operations. As a flexible team player, support Orbis’ activities as needed.

Desired Skills/Abilities

• Experience with defense radar, video data, tactical radio ecosystems, UAV systems, C2 systems, and/or Common Operational Picture systems.
• Experience with microservices, serverless architectures, and messaging protocols.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms, security patterns, and operating in compliance-constrained environments.
• Experience deploying and operating software in field conditions (mission systems, constrained networks, high-reliability expectations).
• Experience working with government customers to deliver and support production systems.