Systems Engineer - (Execution) - Level 5 at Northrop Grumman
Huntsville, AL
$169,000–$253,600from the description
Jun 28, 2026
Huntsville, AL
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior systems engineering role supporting a missile defense weapon systems program, focused on driving technical build execution across multiple development cycles. Day-to-day work involves producing technical review packages, conducting design reviews, assessing specification changes, and contributing to engineering governance boards. Best suited to an experienced engineer with a strong background in requirements management, software architecture, and the software development lifecycle within defense programs.
Senior level · 12+ years · Huntsville, AL · Bachelor's required · Secret clearance · Full-time
Advertised as Principal, but the requirements read as Senior.
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
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
What the occupation pays Median $107,350 (middle half $84,470–$137,860). 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 titles this role 'Systems Engineer – Level 5', which at Northrop Grumman maps to their highest individual-contributor engineering band — hence advertised as Principal. However, the actual scope (build execution support, design reviews, requirements management on a single program) is consistent with a Senior-level role on a standard career ladder; 12 years of experience is ordinary for Senior.
Degree requirement: a Bachelor's in a STEM field is the baseline; a Master's (10 yrs) or PhD (6 yrs) are accepted substitutes, so Bachelor's is the minimum hard gate.
SDLC is listed as a required qualification but is a broad concept; it is retained here because the JD explicitly gates on it and enumerates specific sub-disciplines (design, development, integration, testing, deployment).
Requirements decomposition and requirements management are listed as separate required qualifications but share the same underlying skill area; both are captured as a single skill.
Jira, Confluence, Fisheye/Crucible, and Bitbucket appear under 'Familiarity with Agile software development using tools like…' in the Basic Qualifications section. The 'like' qualifier signals the specific tools are interchangeable, but the requirement for Agile tooling familiarity is a hard gate by section placement.
Scrum Master / Product Owner experience and risk analysis appear under Preferred Qualifications.
GMD domain knowledge is listed as a preferred qualification but names no specific technology or tool, so it is omitted from the skills list per extraction rules.
This role is fully on-site in Huntsville, AL with no remote option and requires an active in-scope Secret clearance at time of application.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): risk analysis.
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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