Senior Software Engineer, AI Platform / Semantic Layer

Basic Qualifications

Education Requirements:

Bachelor's degree in Software Engineering, or related Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics field, plus a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience; or Master's degree, plus 6 years relevant experience.

Clearance Requirements:

Ability to obtain a Department of Defense Secret security clearance is required at time of hire. Applicants selected will be subject to a U.S. Government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information. Due to the nature of work performed within our facilities, U.S. citizenship is required.

Responsibilities For This Position

ROLE AND POSITION OBJECTIVES:

As a Senior Software Engineer engineer for the AI Reliability Engineering (AIRE) organization, you’ll be responsible for:

• Designing and building APIs for AI/agent consumption that expose business concepts and metrics rather than raw tables, so callers work in business terms instead of navigating source systems.
• Building the logic that turns a business question into a validated, governed query and returns results with the appropriate access controls and provenance.
• Integrating with and querying both transactional (OLTP) and analytical (OLAP) data sources through governed access, respecting the grain, join semantics, and performance characteristics of each.
• Ensuring governed answers: enforcing access controls in the serving path, carrying data-sensitivity handling through responses, and routing data access to governed views where source-system security applies.
• Building tooling that grounds the platform in real usage, surfacing the datasets, metrics, and relationships people actually query.
• Collaborating with data architects and functional data owners to build to a shared definition contract, and with the AI/agent teams who consume the service.

We encourage you to apply if you have any of these preferred skills or experiences:

• Strong backend service engineering: Experience shipping production REST or gRPC services with authentication / authorization and an eye for latency and reliability.
• Demonstrated API design for AI/agent consumption, e.g., tool/function-calling interfaces, retrieval/RAG backends, or LLM-orchestration services.
• Genuine working fluency across both OLTP and OLAP: Experience designing and building against a transactional database and an analytical warehouse.
• Strong SQL, including experience writing code that generates or compiles queries (semantic/metrics layer, query builder, ORM internals, or similar), not only hand-authored SQL.

What sets you apart:

• Experience with a semantic or metrics layer (e.g., dbt Semantic Layer, Cube, LookML, or similar).
• Hands-on experience with an enterprise data warehouse and/or a data-virtualization platform.
• Experience with Rust and/or Python.
• Exposure to knowledge graphs, entity resolution, or reconciling shared identifiers across systems.
• Background in defense, manufacturing, or other complex multi-system enterprise environments.

Our Commitment to You:

• An exciting career path with opportunities for continuous learning and development.
• Research oriented work, alongside award winning teams developing practical solutions for our nation’s security
• Flexible schedules with every other Friday off work, if desired (9/80 schedule)
• Competitive benefits, including 401k matching, flex time off, paid parental leave, healthcare benefits, health & wellness programs, employee resource and social groups, and more
• See more at gdmissionsystems.com/careers/why-work-for-us/benefits

Workplace Options:

This position is eligible for Remote, Hybrid or 100% Onsite.

You must be located near a core GDMS location: Scottsdale AZ, Chantilly VA, Bloomington MN, Greensboro NC, Dedham MA, Taunton MA, Pittsfield MA, Orlando FL, San Jose CA, Pittsburgh PA

Target salary range: USD $157,487.00/Yr. - USD $174,713.00/Yr. This estimate represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors (geographic location, etc.). Actual pay may vary. This job posting will remain open until the position is filled.

Company Overview

General Dynamics Mission Systems (GDMS) engineers a diverse portfolio of high technology solutions, products and services that enable customers to successfully execute missions across all domains of operation. With a global team of 12,000+ top professionals, we partner with the best in industry to expand the bounds of innovation in the defense and scientific arenas. Given the nature of our work and who we are, we value trust, honesty, alignment and transparency. We offer highly competitive benefits and pride ourselves in being a great place to work with a shared sense of purpose. You will also enjoy a flexible work environment where contributions are recognized and rewarded. If who we are and what we do resonates with you, we invite you to join our high-performance team!

Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans