Title:
Communications Systems Software Engineer
Why Join Us?
- Innovative Projects: KBR’s work is at the forefront of engineering, logistics, operations, science, program management, mission IT and cybersecurity solutions.
- Collaborative Environment: Be part of a dynamic team that thrives on collaboration and innovation, fostering a supportive and intellectually stimulating workplace.
- Impactful Work: Your contributions will be pivotal in designing and optimizing defense systems that ensure national security and shape the future of space defense.
KBR is seeking a mid-level Communications Systems Software Engineer to develop, integrate, and evaluate communications software capabilities for contested and degraded environments. This role supports protocol emulation, SDR integration, test automation, and operationally relevant systems across research and applied DoD programs.
This position requires a strong foundation in software engineering and the ability to quickly learn and reason about protocol behavior across physical, link, and logical layers. The engineer will work closely with systems engineers, reverse engineering teams, and users across cyber, electronic warfare, and analyst communities to deliver deployable tools and documented workflows.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, develop, and maintain protocol emulator software processing physical, link, and logical layers for documented and proprietary protocols
- Integrate protocol emulators with multiple SDR platforms and validate interoperability against OEM implementations
- Develop and maintain user interfaces to control SDRs, configure scenarios, and visualize operational environments
- Implement test harnesses for protocol validation, fuzzing, weakness discovery, and regression testing across protocol and OEM variants
- Support end-to-end software architecture decisions to ensure the system is modular, maintainable, and deployable across multiple real-world scenarios
- Maintain engineering rigor in an R&D environment by keeping CI/CD pipelines, containers, automated tests, and build tooling healthy and usable by the team
- Read and implement technical documentation and specifications, including translating reverse engineering outputs into working implementations when needed
- Produce technical documentation for tool usage, integration, and expected behaviors to support users not familiar with protocol or hardware state machines
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science
- 4–7 years of professional experience developing software for technical systems
- Proficiency in C/C++ or Python
- Experience developing software on Linux-based systems
- Demonstrated ability to design and maintain clean, testable software in codebases used by multiple engineers
- Ability to understand and reason about protocol behaviors from specifications, traces, and system observations
- Experience integrating software with complex systems or external hardware
- Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. DoD security clearance
Desired Qualifications
- Experience with communications protocols, protocol emulation, or waveform-adjacent development (PHY/L2/L3 concepts)
- Experience integrating with SDRs and RF test equipment, including multi-vendor interoperability testing
- Experience with containerization and CI/CD pipelines supporting automated testing and release workflows
- Familiarity with modeling and simulation environments for scenario generation, mission/environment injection, or lab automation
- Experience developing test plans, documenting results, and communicating technical behaviors to operational users
Basic Compensation: $115,000 - $150,000 (For Beavercreek, OH Only)
The offered rate will be based on the selected candidate’s knowledge, skills, abilities and/or experience and in consideration of internal parity.
Belong, Connect and Grow at KBR
At KBR, we are passionate about our people and our Zero Harm culture. These inform all that we do and are at the heart of our commitment to, and ongoing journey toward being a People First company. That commitment is central to our team of team’s philosophy and fosters an environment where everyone can Belong, Connect and Grow. We Deliver – Together.
KBR is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, veteran status, genetic information, union status and/or beliefs, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.
