Senior Research Engineer

Peraton is seeking a Senior Research Engineer to help drive an established program developing a mature, fielded RF spectrum planning, monitoring, and management system for Department of Defense customers. The development team is strong in full-stack web development; this role exists to add deep engineering and product-definition leadership on top of that foundation.

This individual owns the “what” and the “how it should work.” They translate user needs and operational context into concrete requirements, workflows, interface behavior, data flows, and algorithms. This individual should be able to specify the work precisely enough (through diagrams, pseudocode, and reference implementations) for the team to build it reliably. Direct development is not necessarily expected, but they should be comfortable exploring or reviewing the code itself where necessary. They should be able to contribute to, understand, and defend architecture decisions.

The role functions as a force multiplier for program leadership, absorbing the systems-engineering and product-definition load that currently bottlenecks on too few people. Domain expertise in RF and spectrum management is a strong advantage but is not required; what is required is the engineering horsepower and discipline to master an unfamiliar technical domain quickly and reason about it from first principles.

Success in this role demands genuine technical depth, sound product judgment about what will most increase the product’s value to customers, and the communication skills to align a team that spans software engineers, domain experts, DoD stakeholders, and end users.

Key Responsibilities:

• Own feature and product definition end to end translating user needs and operational context into concrete requirements, workflows, GUI behavior, and data flows
• Design and select algorithms; specify them precisely through flowcharts, sequence diagrams, pseudocode, and interface contracts so the development team can implement them reliably
• Produce the systems-engineering artifacts that align the team: architecture sketches, data-flow and state diagrams, and interface definitions
• Review code and contribute directly where it adds the most leverage; provide pseudocode and reference implementations to unblock and guide the team
• Make and defend architecture and design-tradeoff decisions across the frontend, backend, data layer, and algorithms. Not that this role does not require expertise across web development / software engineering best practices and frameworks but a strong candidate will come to understand these core principles from the development team to inform design decisions.
• Build and maintain a forward-looking product roadmap grounded in customer demand and an assessment of which capabilities will most increase the product’s value and competitiveness over the coming months
• Engage directly with customers, stakeholders, and program leadership to surface needs, validate solutions, and prioritize work
• Deliver live demonstrations, technical briefings, and talks at conferences, field exercises, and customer sites
• Contribute to user-facing documentation (e.g. user manuals, training material, and operator guides) along with the supporting technical documentation

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years experience with BS/BA, 6+ years with a MS/MA, or 3+ years experience with a PhD degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Software/Systems Engineering, Mathematics, or a related field
• Substantial experience designing and delivering real-world software systems, including demonstrated technical leadership on non-trivial projects
• Demonstrated ability to own product and feature definition end to end ranging from user need, to requirements and design, to working software
• Strong systems-engineering discipline: decomposing ambiguous problems, defining data flows and interfaces, and producing the diagrams, specifications, and flowcharts that others can build from
• Algorithm design and analysis ability with the ability to select, design, and reason about the correctness and performance of algorithms, not merely call existing libraries
• Proven ability to ramp quickly on an unfamiliar technical domain using first-principles engineering reasoning
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to present credibly to technical, senior, and non-technical audiences
• Willingness and ability to travel for demonstrations, conferences, field exercises, and customer engagements
• US citizen with the ability to obtain and maintian a Secret security clearance

Desired Qualifications:

• Background in RF, spectrum management, electronic warfare, signal processing, propagation modeling, software defined radios, SIGINT-adjacent systems, or related DoD domains
• Experience with the program stack: React, FastAPI, Python, TypeScript/Node.js, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, message brokers (e.g. NATS, RabbitMQ), and Docker
• Coding fluency with ability to read/review code where applicable, and contribute to a production codebase
• Hands-on coding fluency across a modern web stack (e.g. Python, TypeScript/JavaScript) is a plus
• Familiarity with geospatial visualization (e.g. CesiumJS, PostGIS) and real-time or streaming data
• Experience with AI/LLM integration (e.g. MCP, LangGraph, local/air-gapped inference) in a product context
• Experience delivering software in DoD or government settings, including familiarity with RMF/ATO, CMMC, and GovCloud or IL4/IL5 environments
• Prior customer-facing, forward-deployed, solutions-engineering, or technical product management experience
• Advanced degree in a relevant engineering or scientific field