In a world of possibilities, pursue one with endless opportunities. Imagine Next!

 

At Parsons, you can imagine a career where you thrive, work with exceptional people, and be yourself. Guided by our leadership vision of valuing people, embracing agility, and fostering growth, we cultivate an innovative culture that empowers you to achieve your full potential. Unleash your talent and redefine what’s possible.

 

Job Description:

Parsons has emerged as a leader in developing and delivering cutting-edge solutions to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community by staying relentlessly focused on mission impact and investing in exceptional people. Our success is driven by close collaboration with operators and analysts, ensuring the systems we build are not only innovative but operationally relevant, intuitive, and effective in real-world environments.

Within our Space Operations directorate, we are focused on enabling mission-critical capabilities that support national security in an increasingly contested and dynamic space domain. We bring together experienced subject matter experts and highly skilled technologists to deliver resilient, scalable solutions that directly support operational decision-making and execution.

We are seeking a Systems Engineer with Software Engineering experience who wants to work on systems that matter, supporting operational, system-of-record capabilities used by the space community. In this role, you will be part of a high-performing Agile engineering team developing and sustaining distributed, integration-heavy mission applications. You will operate in a fast-paced environment where understanding end-to-end system behavior, interfaces, and data flows is critical to success.

If you are looking to grow your technical depth while contributing to real-world mission outcomes and want to be part of a team solving complex national security challenges in the space domain, we want you on our team.

This is a hybrid position in Colorado Springs and requires working in the office 2 days a week.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop, update, and maintain systems engineering artifacts for an operational system-of-record, ensuring alignment across requirements, architecture, interfaces, and test.
• Design and implement high-performance, scalable microservices supporting real-time data processing and message throughput
• Develop and optimize Kafka-based event-driven systems, including topic design, partitioning strategies, and throughput tuning
• Derive and document requirements from:
  • Customer needs
  • Existing system behavior
  • Interface/data flow analysis
• Maintain end-to-end traceability between requirements, system behavior, interfaces, and verification artifacts.
• Develop and maintain:
  • Interface Control Documents (ICDs) with clear data flow, format, and protocol definitions
  • System and interface diagrams (logical and data flow focused)
  • Test plans supporting verification across unit, integration, and operational levels
• Analyze and document data flows across distributed systems, including transformations between formats (e.g. binary, XML, JSON).
• Work closely with software, test, and operations teams to ensure:
  • Requirements are implementable and testable.
  • Changes are understood across the full system lifecycle.
• Support system-level integration and test activities, including coordination with external systems and stakeholders.
• Participate in Agile planning, estimation, and technical discussions.
• Identify gaps, risks, and inconsistencies across requirements, architecture, and implementation.

Required Skills

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering or related field with 5+ years of relevant experience (or equivalent experience).
• Experience working on complex, distributed software systems (e.g., microservices, event-driven, or integration-heavy systems).
• Strong experience in:
  • Requirements derivation and decomposition
  • Requirements traceability (RTM or equivalent)
  • Interface definition and documentation (ICDs)
• Some experience in:
  • Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
  • Object-oriented analysis and design techniques
  • Unit/Integration Testing (Junit, SonarQube, Fortify)
• Understanding of system data flows, interfaces, and integration patterns (e.g., REST, messaging systems like Kafka, TCP/IP).
• Experience supporting or developing test strategies across multiple levels (unit, integration, system, operational).
• Strong technical writing skills with the ability to clearly communicate complex system behavior.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, evolving operational environment with changing requirements.
• U.S. Citizenship and the ability to obtain a security clearance.

Desired Skills

• Experience with event-driven or message broker architectures (e.g., Kafka-based systems).
• Java application development experience, specifically within microservice architecture
• Previous experience with Spring Boot, Kafka, and GitLab
• Familiarity with data transformation pipelines (e.g., parsing, translation between formats).
• Experience working on systems-of-record or mission-critical systems.
• Experience in DoD or government programs, especially with formal test and release governance.
• Ability to own a capability area and drive alignment across requirements, development, and test.
• Security+ certification
• TS clearance (with DCID eligibility).

Security Clearance Requirement:

An active Top Secret security clearance is required for this position.​

This position is part of our Federal Solutions team.

The Federal Solutions segment delivers resources to our US government customers that ensure the success of missions around the globe. Our intelligent employees drive the state of the art as they provide services and solutions in the areas of defense, security, intelligence, infrastructure, and environmental. We promote a culture of excellence and close-knit teams that take pride in delivering, protecting, and sustaining our nation's most critical assets, from Earth to cyberspace. Throughout the company, our people are anticipating what’s next to deliver the solutions our customers need now.

Salary Range: $103,500.00 - $181,100.00

We value our employees and want our employees to take care of their overall wellbeing, which is why we offer best-in-class benefits such as medical, dental, vision, paid time off, 401(k), life insurance, flexible work schedules, and holidays to fit your busy lifestyle!

This position will be posted for a minimum of 3 days and will continue to be posted for an average of 30 days until a qualified applicant is selected or the position has been cancelled.

Parsons is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other protected status.

We truly invest and care about our employee’s wellbeing and provide endless growth opportunities as the sky is the limit, so aim for the stars! Imagine next and join the Parsons quest—APPLY TODAY!

Parsons is aware of fraudulent recruitment practices. To learn more about recruitment fraud and how to report it, please refer to https://www.parsons.com/fraudulent-recruitment/.