Systems Engineer - Level 3/4
Northrop Grumman · Colorado Springs, CO
$103,600–$193,900from the description
Jul 11, 2026
Colorado Springs, CO
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A systems engineering role supporting a portfolio of missile defense, space, and intelligence programs, including modeling, simulation, and analysis projects. Day-to-day work centers on producing systems engineering artifacts across the full engineering lifecycle — translating requirements, developing traceable system architectures in SysML, and conducting verification and validation. Suits experienced engineers comfortable with model-based approaches and cross-functional collaboration, who hold an active Top Secret/SCI clearance.
Senior level · 5+ years · Colorado Springs, CO · Bachelor's required · Top Secret clearance · Full-time
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 $112,511 (middle half $80,144–$140,023). 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)
This role is a Systems Engineer, not a software developer — the primary work is systems engineering artifacts, requirements traceability, and modeling/simulation analysis. No single SOC code cleanly covers 'Systems Engineer' in the BLS taxonomy; 15-1299 (Computer Occupations, All Other) is used as the closest fit, with 15-1211 (Computer Systems Analysts) as a plausible alternative.
The posting covers two levels simultaneously: Principal Systems Engineer (Level 3, 5+ years with BS) and Sr. Principal Systems Engineer (Level 4, 8+ years with BS). The salary range spans both levels ($103,600–$193,900). The overall years minimum is set to 5 (the lower gate for Level 3); the upper level would require 8 years.
The level advertised in the title is set to Principal based on the explicit 'Principal/Sr. Principal' title framing; seniority is assessed as Senior because even the higher level (8+ years, component/program ownership) maps to a Senior band — the role does not describe org-wide technical authority characteristic of a true Principal/Staff band.
A current, active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility is a hard gate at time of application — this is TS/SCI. The clearance requirement field is set to TopSecret (the schema's TopSecretSci enum value covers TS/SCI); note that TS/SCI is explicitly required.
MATLAB and Python are listed together as alternatives ('MATLAB, Python, or similar') under the required qualifications — one skill entry is emitted for each with the other as its alternative, reflecting that either satisfies the requirement.
AFSIM and STK appear only under Preferred Qualifications and are marked accordingly.
DODAF/MODAF/UAF and MBSE frameworks appear only under Preferred Qualifications.
Formal verification and validation processes appears in both the Basic and Preferred Qualifications sections — this appears to be a copy/paste artifact in the posting; it is treated as a required skill but is a methodology rather than a named tool, so it is omitted from the skills list per extraction rules.
U.S. Citizenship is required (implied by the clearance gate and explicitly stated at the bottom of the posting).
Requires a Top 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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