Cloud Software Engineer-AI/ML Project Top Secret/SCI w/Poly at Peraton
Laurel, MD
$104,000–$166,000from the description
Jun 28, 2026
Laurel, MD
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A software engineering role focused on developing and maintaining cloud-based cyber and AI/ML capabilities running on large-scale compute clusters and AWS infrastructure. Day-to-day work spans the full development lifecycle — requirements analysis, integration, testing, and issue resolution — with a particular emphasis on distributed systems, NoSQL/big-data technologies, and infrastructure-as-code. Suits engineers with a background in Java or similar languages, AWS, and distributed data platforms who hold an active TS/SCI clearance with polygraph.
Mid level · 5+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
Advertised as Junior, but the requirements read as Mid.
“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
What the occupation pays Median $154,930 (middle half $123,720–$176,230). 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 posting is titled 'Cloud Software Engineer Level 1 Engineer,' which Peraton uses as an internal level designation suggesting entry/junior framing; however, the basic qualifications require 5+ years of software development experience and 2+ years of integration/testing experience, supporting a Mid-level classification.
A Bachelor's degree is described as 'highly desired' and explicitly stated to be 'equivalent to five (5) years of experience,' meaning no degree is hard-gated — degree requirement is set to None.
The TS/SCI with polygraph clearance is an explicit hard gate ('is required').
The NoSQL/distributed data store requirement (HBase, Accumulo, Bigtable) is listed under Basic Qualifications as a hard gate; the specific products are named as examples of the same capability class and are captured as alternatives.
The 'Competencies and Skills' section (LLMs, RAG, AWS architecture, CloudFormation/Terraform, CI/CD, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Java for distributed systems, Linux, scripting, Kubernetes, Agile) reads as a skills profile/context block rather than a gating requirements section, so those skills are marked preferred.
The 'Additional Desired Qualifications' section is explicitly labeled preferred/not required; all skills drawn from it (Hadoop, HDFS, JavaScript, Accumulo internals, Ganglia/Hobbit) are marked preferred.
Cloud certifications (AWS Developer, AWS ML, CKAD, etc.) are listed under 'Additional Desired Qualifications' as preferred and are not extracted as discrete skills since they are certifications rather than named technologies.
The role is located in Laurel, MD, which falls within the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV CBSA.
Requires a TS/SCI 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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