Digital Investigations Software Engineer

At MITRE, your passion fuels work that impacts our nation and improves lives. This is where your skills strengthen national security, cybersecurity, health, transportation, and citizen services. We're a nonprofit engineering, applied research, and advanced technology organization working in the public interest. With objectivity and integrity at our core, we lead federally funded research and development centers for U.S. government agencies - collaborating with industry and academia to deliver integrated, high-impact solutions that advance our nation's health, security, and prosperity. Our people tackle the toughest technical challenges, supported by competitive benefits, meaningful career development, and a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence. Choose MITRE for a career with purpose - and help shape the future.

Department Summary:

The Digital Investigations Department focuses on transforming digital data into actionable understanding for investigative and law enforcement purposes. We combine technical analysis, investigative tradecraft, data analytics, and mission context to answer difficult questions, reconstruct events, identify malicious activity, reveal relationships, and support operational decision-making.

Our staff work across a range of digital investigation specialties, including digital evidence and forensics, open-source and digital intelligence, investigative analytics, adversary and activity analysis, operational investigations, and the development of new investigative capabilities and tradecraft.

Roles & Responsibilities:

MITRE is seeking a Software Engineer to support a long-term national security mission. In this role, you will:

• Design, develop, test, and maintain software capabilities supporting complex technical analysis.
• Work with technical data and existing analytical processes to identify opportunities for software-enabled automation.
• Develop repeatable and scalable workflows and pipelines that transform manual analytical processes into software capabilities.
• Analyze unfamiliar software, data, and technical systems to understand their structure, behavior, and relationships.
• Collaborate closely with government sponsors, software engineers, analysts, and other technical subject-matter experts to understand mission needs and rapidly develop solutions.
• Communicate technical findings, development progress, and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Work regularly in secure facilities, including approximately two days per week at a sponsor location in Northern Virginia.

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 2 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Artificial Intelligence or a related technical field; or an equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Hands-on software development experience using Python or another modern programming language.
• Experience developing, testing, debugging, and maintaining software.
• Experience with / understanding of relational databases
• Demonstrated ability to analyze technical problems and develop software-based solutions.
• Ability to work effectively with technical teams and mission stakeholders in a collaborative environment.
• Ability and willingness to perform development and technical work on-site in secure facilities, including approximately two days per week at a sponsor location in Northern Virginia.
• Must have an active Top Secret U.S Government issued Security Clearance and must be eligible to obtain and maintain a Top Secret/SCI 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 3 days per week on-site.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field and 5 or more years of related experience.
• Proficiency developing software in Python.
• Experience developing data-processing, analysis, or automation pipelines.
• Experience automating manual analytical or data-transformation workflows.
• Experience with software analysis, reverse engineering, static or dynamic analysis, or analyzing unfamiliar software and codebases.
• Familiarity with software supply chains, software dependencies, package ecosystems, build systems, or software provenance.
• Experience integrating multiple data sources into repeatable analytical or software workflows.
• Experience developing software or performing technical analysis in classified or otherwise restricted computing environments.
• Experience working directly with government sponsors or mission stakeholders to translate operational or analytical needs into technical capabilities.
• Experience with collaborative software development practices, including version control, code review, testing, and documentation.
• Demonstrated ability to take ownership of ambiguous technical problems, learn new technical domains quickly, and deliver capabilities on accelerated timelines.
• Active TS/SCI security clearance.

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

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

Salary compensation range and midpoint:
$129,200 - $161,500 - $193,800 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.

MITRE intends to maintain a website that is fully accessible to all individuals. If you are unable to search or apply for jobs and would like to request a reasonable accommodation for any part of MITRE's employment process, please email recruitinghelp@mitre.org for general support and collegerecruiting@mitre.org for intern positions. This service is for individuals requiring reasonable accommodation requests. Please note that vendor solicitations will not receive a reply.

Benefits information may be found here .

Copyright © 1997-2026, The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved. MITRE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. Material on this site may be copied and distributed with permission only.