IC Mission Data Innovation Engineer

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The Mission Operations Department supports national intelligence mission centers by strengthening warning, collection, analysis, enterprise coordination, and strategy execution. The department helps senior government sponsors identify seams across mission areas, reduce fragmentation, and build integrated responses to complex national security challenges. It provides the policy, analytic, operational, and technical depth required to help mission partners work as a unified enterprise advancing intelligence integration and national security outcomes.

Position Summary:

MITRE's National Intelligence Division is seeking an Intelligence Community (IC) Mission Data Innovation Engineer at the Senior career step to serve as the technical lead for a sponsor directorate while providing hands-on data engineering and mission data modernization expertise. The role will be an important contributor to shaping the technical nature and direction of MITRE's support to the IC sponsor, helping identify where innovative data, engineering, and integration approaches can create mission value and translating those opportunities into practical technical efforts across mission data, analytical workflows, integration, and operational modernization.

The successful candidate will combine practical data engineering depth with the judgment, creativity, and influence to provide technical leadership across a sponsor directorate. This is an individual-contributor technical lead role: the candidate will help shape the technical direction of MITRE's support, establish technical approaches, connect related efforts, identify cross-cutting dependencies and risks, and help mission, analytic, architecture, and engineering communities converge on implementable solutions without direct personnel-management responsibility.

The Innovation Engineer will assess existing data and workflow challenges, guide modernization approaches, identify opportunities to apply emerging or innovative techniques, and remain hands-on by rapidly developing Python-based prototypes and proofs of concept that demonstrate how improved data integration, automation, and engineering practices can support operational decision-making. The ideal candidate can move fluidly from directorate-level mission priorities to workflow and system analysis, technical architecture and trade-space decisions, and enough working implementation to evaluate feasibility and inform delivery.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Serve as the technical lead for a sponsor directorate, providing hands-on technical leadership and engineering judgment across mission data modernization, integration, analytics-enablement, and operational decision-support efforts, while helping shape the technical character and direction of MITRE's support to the sponsor.
  
• Partner with directorate leadership, mission stakeholders, analysts, architects, developers, and other technical communities to translate mission priorities and operational workflows into coherent technical direction, implementable engineering requirements, and sequenced technical approaches.
  
• Own the technical view across related directorate efforts by assessing data, systems, interfaces, architectures, and workflows; identify cross-cutting data quality, integration, interoperability, automation, usability, dependency, and modernization challenges.
  
• Shape solution architecture and technical trade-space decisions while designing and implementing practical data engineering solutions, including data ingestion, transformation, integration, data models, APIs, and workflow automation across cloud, hybrid, and legacy environments.
  
• Lead technical discovery and rapidly develop Python-based prototypes and proofs of concept to evaluate approaches, demonstrate feasibility, test integration patterns, reduce technical risk, and inform directorate implementation decisions.
  
• Establish and promote sound engineering practices and data visualization standards that improve data quality, usability, interpretability, interoperability, and readiness for analysis and operational use; drive pragmatic solutions in constrained environments while surfacing technical tradeoffs, risks, dependencies, and opportunities for reuse across efforts.
  
• Develop and communicate technical strategy, architecture and engineering recommendations, requirements, implementation approaches, assessments, and briefings; shape the technical portfolio of support by identifying promising technical approaches and opportunities for innovation, and serve as a trusted technical integrator across Government, MITRE, and contractor teams.

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 5 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 3 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
  
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Data Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, Systems Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
  
• Hands-on experience designing, implementing, or modernizing data integration solutions and production data pipelines, with the ability to move from mission or workflow needs to a working technical implementation.
  
• Strong proficiency with Python and SQL for data processing, automation, analysis support, or systems integration.
  
• Experience with data integration methods and technologies such as ETL/ELT, APIs, batch processing, data modeling, schema design, and interface development.
  
• Experience assessing data quality, metadata, lineage, interoperability, and data lifecycle or data management practices in complex data environments.
  
• Experience developing technical requirements, data and system architecture artifacts, interface documentation, implementation plans, prototypes, proofs of concept, or test approaches.
  
• Understanding of Intelligence Community missions, organizations, data-sharing environments, operational workflows, and security considerations.
  
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively as an individual-contributor technical lead in a complex, classified, matrixed, and fast-paced sponsor environment, influencing technical outcomes across teams without relying on direct supervisory authority.
  
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate directorate mission priorities and complex engineering issues into clear technical recommendations, facilitate technical decisions, and explain tradeoffs to mission and senior technical stakeholders.
  
• Must have an active Top Secret/SCI w/Poly U.S Government issued Security Clearance. Per the U.S. Government’s eligibility requirements, you must be a U.S Citizen to be considered for a security clearance.
  
• This position requires a minimum of 4 days a week on-site.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience serving as a technical lead, lead engineer, or senior technical advisor for data engineering, mission data modernization, enterprise integration, operational data workflows, or technical innovation within the Intelligence Community or broader national security enterprise.
  
• Experience supporting Counterterrorism (CT), Counterintelligence (CI), or other IC mission-specific data and analytic environments.
  
• Experience developing Python-based prototypes, proofs of concept, or automation that connect data, analytic, and operational workflows.
  
• Experience with modern enterprise integration approaches such as event-driven architectures, API-centric architectures, federated data services, data mesh, or data fabric.
  
• Experience working with cloud or hybrid data platforms, distributed data processing, scalable storage and compute, and modern warehouse, lake, or lakehouse patterns.
  
• Experience applying DevSecOps or DataOps practices, including automated testing, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, containerized services, or repeatable deployment patterns.
  
• Experience enabling analytics or AI/ML use cases through data engineering, including scalable data preparation and AI-ready data architectures.
  
• Experience modernizing legacy data environments and managing technical transition risk across multiple systems or mission stakeholders.
  
• Ability to build trust quickly with mission stakeholders and operate with discretion, sound judgment, and minimal direction.
  
• Experience leading technical integration across multiple IC elements, mission stakeholders, and technical organizations to align mission data strategy, architecture, engineering, dependencies, and implementation activities.

This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):

Top Secret/SCI/Polygraph

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):

Top Secret/SCI/Polygraph

Salary compensation range and midpoint:

$124,400 - $155,500 - $186,600 Annual

Work Location Type:

Onsite

Commitment to Non-Discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local or international law.

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