Principal Engineer Software - DevOps at Northrop Grumman
Melbourne, FL
$98,400–$147,600from the description
Jul 14, 2026
Melbourne, FL
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A DevOps engineering role focused on breaking apart legacy monolithic codebases into micro-service architectures, with day-to-day work spanning CI/CD pipeline creation and maintenance, container orchestration via Docker and Kubernetes, database refactoring, and infrastructure management. The position suits an experienced full-stack or platform engineer comfortable with OOP languages, cloud-adjacent tooling, and networking fundamentals who holds an active 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.
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 (9)
The title 'Principal DevOps Engineer' is Northrop Grumman's internal level label, not the industry-standard Staff/Principal band; the actual requirements (5 years' experience, standard senior-level scope) support a Senior classification.
The degree requirement is a STEM Bachelor's with 5 years, or STEM Master's with 3 years, or STEM PhD with 1 year — the minimum formal degree is a Bachelor's, but equivalent experience is NOT offered as a substitute, so Bachelors is set as the hard requirement.
OOP language proficiency (C/C++, Python, Java) is listed as a hard gate in Basic Qualifications; Python is used as the primary name with C++ and Java as alternatives. C# is explicitly called 'a plus' in the same sentence and is marked preferred.
Full-stack UI framework experience (React, Angular, Blazor) is listed as a hard gate; React is the primary name with Angular and Blazor as alternatives.
'Proficiency with databases and APIs' is a single required line — databases and REST (APIs) are emitted as separate required skills.
CI/CD pipeline experience is a hard gate; specific pipeline tools (GitLab CI, Azure Pipelines, GitHub Actions) appear in the narrative/essential-functions section rather than the Basic Qualifications list, so they are marked preferred with alternatives.
Scripting skills (PowerShell, Bash, YAML/JSON) and IaC tools (Terraform, Ansible) appear only under Preferred Qualifications and are marked accordingly.
An active in-scope Secret clearance (background investigation within the last 6 years) is an explicit 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.
Read the full posting
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