Space Protection Mission Data Engineer

Job ID: 2617445

Location: Chantilly, VA, US

Date Posted: 2026-09-30

Category: Engineering and Sciences

Subcategory: Systems Engineer

Schedule: Full-Time

Shift: Day Job

Travel: Yes - 10% of the time

Minimum Clearance Required: TS.SCI_wPoly

Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain: None

Potential for Remote Work: ORA_ON_SITE

Description

SAIC is seeking a Space Protection Mission Data Engineer to join the Space and Intelligence Business Group providing systems engineering and technical advisory services to a Government Intelligence Community (IC) customer. The customer is developing the next generation of space and ground systems, architectures, and hardware and software solutions.

The Space Protection Mission Data Engineer will serve as the subject matter expert (SME) and System Program Office (SPO) representative coordinating with the development contractor and stakeholders (including end user operators) for deployment of new space protection and Indications and Warning (I&W) capabilities into space operations. The Space Protection Mission Data Engineer collaborates within a team of mission-related SMEs to support the development and delivery of reliable, scalable data solutions for an I&W ground system that maximizes data quality and reliability while optimizing system cost and performance.

The Space Protection Mission Data Engineer responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Provides data management and integration support to the government’s system data layer solution owner for the software development of a ground system providing space I&W capabilities.
• Coordinates with mission application development teams to elicit system data layer needs and dependencies and supports delivery of well-documented, reliable datasets and interfaces.
• Manages the generation and maintenance of system data layer requirements and performance measures in coordination with the Government, third-party developers, and other stakeholders.
• Leads the identification, coordination, and system integration of Department of War (DoW) and IC external data sources.
• Evaluates data architectures and assesses overall technical progress of system’s data layer development, offering recommendations to the government to improve data pipelines, data quality, and other technical data-related issues.
• Represents the SPO during software Program Increment (PI) planning, pre-planning, Sprint close-out, and demonstration events to guide development activities and ensure focus on SPO’s data layer priorities.

Qualifications

Required:

• Must possess an active TS/SCI clearance with polygraph.
• Bachelor’s and nine years or more experience; master’s and seven years or more of experience; PhD and four or more years of experience in computer science, computer engineering, data engineering, related field, or equivalent experience.
• Experience developing, testing, or fielding space software systems, space or ground components.
• Experience engineering, managing, and evaluating data layer solutions.
• Familiar with trade-offs between data management architectures and technologies.

Desired:

• Experience with scalable ETL/ELT data pipelines from multiple structured and unstructured data sources.
• Experience authoring interface control documents or application programming interfaces.
• Familiarity with Data-as-a-Service architecture approaches utilizing restful APIs.
• Familiarity with SQL and NoSQL database architectures.
• Familiarity with attribute level tagging and data visibility controls for multi-level security data architectures.
• Familiarity with cloud architecture, application, and integration (e.g., DataBricks, AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Familiarity with Agile development methodologies including participation in scrums, development of solution epics/features, and continuous integration/continuous deployment.

Target salary range: $160,001 - $200,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.