Job description
Position Title: Technical Lead, Electronic Warfare Software Engineering
Location: Hybrid to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD
Clearance Requirement: Must have a U.S. Top Secret Security Clearance at minimum
Employment type: Full Time
Research Innovations, Inc. (RII) is breaking through the big, slow, status quo with transformative technology that fundamentally changes and improves the world. We develop cutting-edge software for all levels of the government and military. Using agile development practices and user-centered design, we create innovative software solutions for complex real-world problems.
We are seeking a Technical Lead to provide hands-on software engineering leadership for our Tactical Command and Control (TC2) electronic warfare (EW) systems. This role is ideal for an engineer who thrives in owning mature systems, guiding technical direction, and ensuring long-term reliability, performance, and mission effectiveness—while still contributing directly to code and design.
WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING
- Serve as the technical lead for established EW software systems, owning architecture, design decisions, and technical roadmap.
- Lead sustainment, modernization, and incremental enhancement of existing mission-critical systems.
- Balance new feature development with technical debt reduction, refactoring, and performance optimization.
- Design, implement, and review software in Java, C/C++, and Python, remaining hands-on throughout the development lifecycle.
- Guide engineering teams through architecture decisions, trade-off analysis, and implementation approaches.
- Collaborate with Systems, Hardware, Test, and Operations teams to ensure reliable integration and deployment.
- Decompose operational and sustainment requirements into actionable, prioritized work aligned with agile execution.
- Troubleshoot complex production and field issues, including performance degradation and integration failures.
- Define and maintain technical documentation, architecture diagrams, and sustainment artifacts.
- Ensure systems meet security, scalability, reliability, and mission requirements over long operational lifecycles.
- Communicate technical status, risks, and decisions clearly to stakeholders, customers, and leadership.
WHAT YOU HAVE DONE
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field, with 10+ years of software engineering experience (or equivalent).
- Demonstrated experience serving as a Technical Lead or senior engineer on complex software systems.
- Significant experience sustaining and evolving established systems, not just greenfield development.
- Strong software design and architecture experience for long-lived, mission-critical applications.
- Hands-on development experience in Java, C/C++, and Python.
- Proven ability to lead technical decisions, conduct code reviews, and mentor engineers.
- Experience supporting systems through full lifecycle operations, including sustainment, upgrades, and defect resolution.
- Ability to analyze and resolve complex technical issues in production or operational environments.
- Familiarity with agile development practices in environments with legacy and modern components.
- Experience working across distributed teams with limited oversight.
- Background in defense, EW, radar, communications, or other real-time/mission systems.
EVEN BETTER
- Experience modernizing legacy systems or transitioning architectures without disrupting operations.
- Knowledge of Electronic Warfare concepts, RF systems, or signal processing.
- Experience with performance tuning, system reliability, and availability improvements.
- Familiarity with DoD systems, standards, or programs of record.
- Experience supporting Joint or Coalition operational systems.
- Exposure to software sustainment best practices, including configuration management and long-term maintainability.
#LI-MC1
At RII, we believe that diversity in our workforce is critical to our success. We strive to hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes us stronger. We work to help your intellectual passions and creativity thrive. It’s one of our core values: Let your geek flag fly.
We also offer all employees comprehensive benefits including: flexible work schedules, health insurance coverage, paid time off, 401k with a company match, paid parental leave, access to wellness programs and much more. You get this all from day one, and all paid for by RII.
It’s all part of another of our core values: Stay human. It’s why our comfortable and colorful offices such as our headquarters, include a community game room, pantry, massage chair, and an escape room, among other amenities. It’s why we have community ambassadors and regular community events.
Research Innovations, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, national origin, genetics, disability status, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by state, federal or local law.
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
