Principal Engineer Software at Northrop Grumman
Melbourne, FL
$98,400–$147,600from the description
Jun 30, 2026
Melbourne, FL
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A software engineering role on an aeronautics surveillance program, covering the full development lifecycle from requirements and design through integration, testing, and maintenance. The work involves C/C++ or similar object-oriented languages across Linux and Windows environments, with a focus on solving complex integration problems and supporting automated testing and metrics. Suits engineers with Agile experience who can work independently on difficult technical challenges and hold or obtain a DoD Secret clearance.
Senior level · 5+ years · Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, FL · Bachelor's required · 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 $134,657 (middle half $104,151–$166,625). 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 (6)
The title is 'Principal Engineer Software' but the actual requirements — a Bachelor's + 5 years (or Master's + 3 years) with no org-wide technical authority scope — align with a Senior-level role. Northrop Grumman uses 'Principal' as an internal grade label rather than the top-of-ladder Principal band.
A Secret clearance (or interim Secret) is a hard gate to start; an active Secret or Top Secret with recent issue/reissue is listed under Preferred Qualifications.
The OOP language requirement is stated as 'C/C++ or other OOP languages' — C++ is captured as the primary skill with C as an alternative; the open-ended 'other OOP languages' framing means other languages (Java, Python, etc.) could satisfy this gate.
Debugging experience is listed as a distinct Basic Qualification ('debugging software in both the desktop and target environments') and is captured as a required skill.
Customer interaction and communication skills appear only under Preferred Qualifications and are soft skills, so they are omitted from the skills list per extraction rules.
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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