Description

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems Sector has an opening for a Staff Engineer Software (Radar/Tracking) to join Global Surveillance Division supporting a team of qualified, diverse individuals. This position will be located in Melbourne, Florida.

Responsibilities will include deploying, automating, maintaining, troubleshooting, and improving the systems and software infrastructure running smoothly. This role requires you to have hands-on technical experience and a can-do approach towards environment automation and management along with continuous improvements. You will be a team member working in agile development process. You will be responsible for the design and implementation of application builds, releases, deployment along with configuration activities. Your responsibilities will include working with internal business partners to gather requirements, prototyping, and architecting complex solutions supporting the building and test plan execution, performing quality reviews, and triaging and fixing operational issues. The candidate will assist with the integration, troubleshooting and testing of implemented software changes. The ideal candidate will have the ability to take ownership of ambiguous hard problems and drive to a solution, while working in a team environment. It is critical that you understand the software development life cycle and have an in-depth knowledge of automated testing to facilitate and analyze large data sets. The Software Engineer will develop, modify, and maintain customized or standardized applications using software engineering best practices and standards, and participate in the full life cycle of software development, to include requirements development, modeling and design, application development, unit to CSCI testing, integration, formal system testing, release, installation, and maintenance.

The ideal candidate will have the ability to take ownership of hard problems and drive to a solution, while working in a team environment and provide leadership for its implementation. It is critical that you understand the software development life cycle and have an in-depth knowledge of automated testing to facilitate and analyze large data sets. The Software Engineer will participate in the full life cycle of software development, to include requirements development, modeling and design, application development, unit to CSCI testing, integration, formal system testing, release, installation, and maintenance. The Software Engineer will apply technical expertise in solving complex integrations problems.

The Software Engineer will interact with Program Management, external suppliers and/or government customers. Therefore, excellent verbal, written and interpersonal skills are required. A solid experience in bash scripting, C/C++, or other OOP languages, in a Linux environment is required. Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD secret security clearance and Special Program Access is required.

Roles & Responsibilities:

This position is primarily engaged in the development and fielding of target tracking and sensor fusion systems for advanced multi-function RF and EOIR subsystems. Key features of operation include analyzing, shaping, and relating data from a wide variety of modes, such as: long-range search and track Radar waveforms, electronic surveillance measure returns, and Electro-Optic/Infrared video inputs. You will have the opportunity to become the subject matter expert for the target tracking (TRK) CSCI and contribute to the overall design of the software.

It is critical that you understand the software development life cycle and have an in-depth knowledge of automated testing to facilitate and analyze large data sets.

The Target Tracking Software Lead Engineer will:

participate in the full life cycle of software development, to include requirements development, modeling and design, application development, unit to CSCI testing, integration, formal system testing, release, installation, and maintenance.
apply technical expertise in solving complex integrations problems
interact with Program Management, external suppliers and/or government customers.

Essential Functions:

Full lifecycle design, implementation, and unit testing of software
Work with various team members to integrate functionality with other software components.
Ability to lead a team and /or provide leadership to drive solutions of complex problems
Support software working groups with the customer
Ensure software best practices are followed
Ability to analyze the system as a whole and determine potential impacts of integrating new technologies
Develop software products within all phases of the software lifecycle.
Ability to debug complex tracking problems, often working with Systems Engineering
Develop and support systems to receive, store, process, display, correlate, fuse and forward surface data [GMTI, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Maritime Moving Target Indicator (MMTI), Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR), High Range Resolution (HRR) and Electronic Protection (EP)] from multiple sources.
Developing software products implemented from algorithms.
In-depth working knowledge from tracker fundamentals through fusion, parametric and correlating trackers.
Candidate must be able to create/modify/debug a tracker/fusion simulation tool and create realistic simulations; simulate sensor data, simulate clutter and FAR, etc.; knowledge of surveillance, targeting, etc. scenarios.
In-depth understand basic differences between Airborne Tracking v Ground Tracking including clutter environments, FAR, impacts of target Velocity, impacts of sensor update rates, Road Networks (Ground), Geographic Gates (Air), Track Grouping, etc.

Basic Qualifications:

(Staff Engineer Software) Bachelor’s degree and 14 or more years of experience in software engineering OR a Master’s degree and 12 or more years of experience OR a PhD degree and 9 or more years of experience.
Higher proficiency understanding and developing multi-target trackers, adaptive processing, or sensor fusion algorithms.
Demonstrated programming experience/expertise in C/C++ or other OO language.
Proficiency in at least one high-productivity + one high-performance language (e.g., MATLAB + C++), with strong fundamentals in algorithms, data structures, debugging, and writing testable code
Demonstrated experience with tracker SW and it's components (i.e. association, correlation, time propagation, measurement conditioning, and track maintenance)
Understanding of software full lifecycle development.
Ability to debug and solve SW problems (esp. tracker problems) quickly and effectively.
Basic understanding of Discrete Math and Linear Algebra, Probability and Kalman Filters; Ability to develop Matlab SW and translate between Matlab and HOL.
Experience developing software to receive, store, process, display, correlate, fuse and forward surface data, Synthetic Aperture Radar, Maritime Moving Target Indicator, Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar, High Range Resolution, EO/IR, and Electronic Protection from multiple sources.
Ability to communicate effectively with customers, senior leadership, and other engineering disciplines.
Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD Secret security clearance
Able to obtain and maintain a program special access program clearance.

Preferred Qualifications:

Master's Degree or PhD in a STEM discipline including electives in radar techniques and signal processing.
High level experience and proficiency in signal processing or RF applications.
Proficiency with optimal estimation algorithms (Kalman Filtering), digital beamforming, or adaptive processing.
Experience integrating and testing of modes/algorithms on RADAR, SIGINT, EOIR, or EW systems.
Active In-scope DoD Top Secret Clearance.
Has been previously approved for special access programs.
Understanding of parallel processing; Threaded applications.
Holds a Tracker patent; Understands basic tracker mechanics and challenges including, but not limited to:
- Measurement conditioning
- Measurement update rates
- Measurement latency (especially w/off-board Data (TADIL-J,etc))
- Measurement differences (see also coordinate system transformation)
- Track Propagation
- Association
- Correlation
- Kinematic estimation
- Track Update (w/measurement(s))
- Kalman Filters
- Track Registration (coordinate system registration between sensor platforms)
- Coordinate system transformation
- Passive v Active Tracking
- Sensor knowledge
Ability to understand and integrate new sensors (states/attributes)
Sensor Knowledge – radar, IFF, ADS-B, ESM, AIS, Intel, IRST, PPLI, TADIL, etc.)
Understanding of Tracker challenges; bad measurements; redundant measurements, poor association, poor correlation, track switching and how to overcome them
Demonstrated expertise building multi-target trackers, adaptive processing, and/or multi-sensor fusion algorithms
STAP / space-time filtering concepts
Motion compensation / range migration concepts, sidelobe control, calibration concepts and Track-before-detect concepts (where applicable)
IMM (maneuver models), smoothing (e.g., RTS), bias/registration concepts
Track-to-track fusion techniques (e.g., covariance intersection; tracklet fusion; timing alignment)
In-depth working knowledge of Fusion topics, Utilizing multiple sensors, Fuzzy logic, Target/Combat ID.

Additional Information

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: Relocation assistance may be available
CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: Yes
CLEARANCE TYPE: Secret
TRAVEL: Yes, 10% of the Time

Staff Engineer Software (Radar/Tracking)