Senior/Principal Fullstack Developer - Emergency Response Software Development, Onsite

Sandia National Laboratories is the nation's premier science and engineering lab for national security and technology innovation, with teams of specialists focused on cutting-edge work in a broad array of areas. Some of the main reasons we love our jobs:

• Challenging work with amazing impact that contributes to security, peace, and freedom worldwide
• Extraordinary co-workers
• Some of the best tools, equipment, and research facilities in the world
• Career advancement and enrichment opportunities
• Flexible work arrangements for many positions include 9/80 (work 80 hours every two weeks, with every other Friday off) and 4/10 (work 4 ten-hour days each week) compressed workweeks, part-time work, and telecommuting (a mix of onsite work and working from home)
• Generous vacation, strong medical and other benefits, competitive 401k, learning opportunities, relocation assistance and amenities aimed at creating a solid work/life balance*

World-changing technologies. Life-changing careers. Learn more about Sandia at: http://www.sandia.gov

*These benefits vary by job classification.

The Emergency Response Software Development Team (ERSDT) is seeking an enthusiastic full-stack developer to join our team and help design, build, and maintain innovative software tools and solutions that support the Department of Energy's Nuclear Incident Response Program (NIRP). NIRP provides research and technical solutions, expert analysis, and highly trained emergency response professionals to support the Federal Governments response to accidents or acts of terrorism involving radiological, chemical, or biological material. The software developed by our team directly supports this vital national mission.

As a software engineer on the ERSDT, you will work alongside a collaborative team to develop a wide range of custom applications, including both web-based and standalone tools, that help scientists, engineers, and emergency response professionals tackle complex technical challenges. You will work directly with technical staff and subject matter experts to understand mission needs, translate scientific and operational requirements into effective software solutions, and deliver capabilities that have real-world impact.
This role offers the opportunity to work in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment where mission needs evolve, and technical challenges are both complex and meaningful. The successful candidate will have experience working with scientific and technical software applications and will enjoy partnering closely with scientists, engineers, and other technical staff throughout the development lifecycle. In this position, you will have the opportunity to leverage the unique expertise, multidisciplinary environment, and mission focus of a national laboratory to solve difficult problems in support of emergency response and national security.

On any given day, you may be called on to:

• Design, develop, and test high-reliability applications that support emergency response missions
• Diagnose and resolve software issues across development, test, and production environments
• Apply agile development practices such as continuous integration, collective code ownership, and code review to deliver high-quality software
• Collaborate with subject matter experts to translate scientific and operational needs into effective software solutions
• Contribute to team coding standards, development practices, and software quality

The position allows a combination of onsite and offsite work. The candidate must live within a reasonable distance of the assigned work location and be available to work onsite a minimum of three days per week as necessary.

Must be willing to support occasional travel.

$117,500 - $235,700

*Salary range is estimated, and actual salary will be determined after consideration of the selected candidate's experience and qualifications, and application of any approved geographic salary differential.

• A Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline and five (5) years of directly relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of directly relevant education and engineering or scientific experience that demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and ability to perform independent research and development.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DOE Q level security clearance and an SCI level security clearance which may require a polygraph.

The ideal R&D S&E Computer Science candidate will in addition possess the following:

• Graduate degree in Computer Science or a highly related field where an independent research project was a graduation requirement (e.g., independent project, thesis, or dissertation).
• Demonstrated software development skills and familiarity with modern software development practices and tools (e.g., Agile).
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, ability to work effectively in multidisciplinary teams, and a passion to improve and expand technical skills.

Also, for this posting, we are seeking individuals with one or more of the following qualifications:

• Excellent analytical skills and the ability to derive user requirements from incomplete or ambiguous customer requests
• Professional experience with web development, object-oriented programming, software design patterns, and development best practices
• Experience developing software primarily in Java and TypeScript using tools such as Eclipse, Visual Studio Code, and GitLab
• Experience building and maintaining robust applications that support a diverse user base
• Experience with REST API design and consumption, service-based architectures, webhooks, and other interservice communication techniques
• Familiarity with developing standalone applications
• Familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and related web technologies
• Proficiency with SQL and experience with advanced database concepts
• Experience participating in code reviews and collaborative software development practices
• Skills in developing software capabilities that integrate Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies
• Ability to research unfamiliar technologies and frameworks and apply them effectively to real-world solutions
• Experience solving challenging, open-ended technical problems with creative and scalable solutions

Experience in applied AI/LLM technologies is also desired, including:

• Solid understanding of LLM mechanics, including context windows, tokenization, and prompt engineering
• Knowledge of vector databases or retrieval systems
• Familiarity with evaluating AI systems for accuracy, latency, and alignment with user intent
• Knowledge of agentic or orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph or LangChain

Additional desired qualifications include:

• Active DOE Q-level security clearance with the willingness and ability to acquire and maintain an SCI clearance

The Critical Software Systems department builds mission software for high-consequence national security applications. Our work supports weapons of mass destruction response, nuclear and radiological incident response, cybersecurity, infrastructure protection, and strategic defense. We partner directly with mission customers to turn operational needs into secure, scalable software systems for scientific analysis, complex data management, and mission operations.

This posting will be open for application submissions for a minimum of three (3) calendar days, including the 'posting date'. Sandia reserves the right to extend the posting date at any time.

Sandia is required by DOE to conduct a pre-employment drug test and background review that includes checks of personal references, credit, law enforcement records, and employment/education verifications. Applicants for employment need to be able to obtain and maintain a DOE Q-level security clearance, which requires U.S. citizenship. If you hold more than one citizenship (i.e., of the U.S. and another country), your ability to obtain a security clearance may be impacted.

Applicants offered employment with Sandia are subject to a federal background investigation to meet the requirements for access to classified information or matter if the duties of the position require a DOE security clearance. Substance abuse or illegal drug use, falsification of information, criminal activity, serious misconduct or other indicators of untrustworthiness can cause a clearance to be denied or terminated by DOE, resulting in the inability to perform the duties assigned and subsequent termination of employment.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, or veteran status and any other protected class under state or federal law.

If you have a Medical Portable Electronic Device (MedPED), such as a pacemaker, defibrillator, drug-releasing pump, hearing aids, or diagnostic equipment and other equipment for measuring, monitoring, and recording body functions such as heartbeat and brain waves, if employed by Sandia National Laboratories you may be required to comply with NNSA security requirements for MedPEDs.

If you have a MedPED and you are selected for an on-site interview at Sandia National Laboratories, there may be additional steps necessary to ensure compliance with NNSA security requirements prior to the interview date.