Software Engineer at Aquila Technology
Lexington, MA
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Jul 23, 2026
Lexington, MA
Jul 25, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A software engineering role supporting a defense research organization near Lexington, MA, focused on designing and implementing software architectures for domains such as tracking, image processing, machine learning, and AI. The work involves Python and Linux-heavy development across both Linux and Windows environments, with an emphasis on parallel and multithreaded programming. Suits experienced engineers comfortable working in classified, multidisciplinary teams.
Senior level · 5+ years · Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH · Bachelor's required · Secret clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
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 $169,742 (middle half $134,780–$187,781).
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 (9)
The posting lists 'IDE to Java' with 1 year under Must Have — interpreted as IDE experience applied to Java development (1 year), captured as a Java skill with the years demanded of 1.
Maven/Gradle and Make/Autotools are listed together in a single 5-year Must Have line; Maven is the primary with Gradle as an alternative, and Make is emitted separately with Autotools as its alternative.
Git/GitHub and Git/GitLab appear in separate Must Have lines; consolidated into one Git skill with GitHub and GitLab as alternatives.
Containerization experience appears only under Preferred Skills; Docker is used as the canonical representative technology.
AI/Machine Learning appears under both 'Nice to Have' and 'Preferred Skills' sections; marked as preferred accordingly.
The posting notes the team 'will consider more senior candidates,' indicating the role is open to levels above the 5-year minimum — seniority is assessed as Senior based on the 5-year floor and the defense/research scope.
Work location is primarily onsite (4 days/week) near Lexington, MA; one WFH day per week does not qualify this as remote.
An active Secret clearance is explicitly required to be considered; the closing line 'Secret Clearance or above is preferred' is a restatement, not a softening of the gate.
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.
Read the full posting
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