Radio Frequency Software Engineer Principal - 1660
Global InfoTek, Inc. · Reston, VA
$100,000–$240,000
Jun 30, 2026
Reston, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A hands-on technical lead role focused on building and owning a production data pipeline that ingests, processes, and stores real-time RF sensor data streams in support of cyber operations. The work involves architecting stream ingestion and post-processing components, guiding a small team of senior engineers, and transitioning Python prototypes to compiled languages for deployment on resource-constrained tactical edge hardware. Suits a deeply experienced software engineer comfortable bridging research and production in classified-adjacent environments.
Senior level · 10+ years · Remote · Secret clearance · Contract
Pay in the description: $150–$200/hr
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (10)
The posting is classified as 1099/Consultant, confirming a contract (not full-time) engagement.
Clearance is listed as 'Public Trust (Secret Eligible)' — the role gates on the ability to obtain a Secret clearance, so Secret is the appropriate level.
The title is 'Principal Software Engineer' but the scope — leading a small team of senior engineers on a single production pipeline — is consistent with a Senior individual contributor or a working tech lead, not a true org-wide Principal. Seniority is assessed as Senior.
The compiled/systems language requirement (Rust, C, C++, or Go) is a single hard gate; Rust is listed first and is the preferred porting target per the JD, with the others captured as alternatives.
FlatBuffers and Protocol Buffers are listed as a single 'binary serialization formats' requirement with both named as examples; FlatBuffers is the primary format used in the pipeline (NDF/stream replay), so it is the primary skill with Protocol Buffers as an alternative.
Desired Skills section covers ZeroMQ/RabbitMQ, Polars, DuckDB, LLM-assisted dev tools, React/D3, and Jupyter Notebooks — all marked preferred.
US Citizenship is explicitly required; this is not captured in a structured field but is a hard gate for this role.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Posting is for a contract engagement — the market benchmarks below price full-time roles, so read the comp comparison with that in mind.
Caller marked this a fully-remote role — scored against the national candidate pool.
Read the full posting
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