Skip to main content
Posted June 13, 2026
Northrop Grumman

Sr Principal Network Engineer - R10236170

San Diego, CA, US Full Time
$129300 - $193900
Reference: R10236170

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: Relocation assistance may be available

CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: No

CLEARANCE TYPE: Secret

TRAVEL: Yes, 10% of the Time

Description

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Northrop Grumman Mission Systems is a trusted provider of mission-enabling solutions for global security.  Our organization is chartered with providing the skills, innovative technologies to develop, design, produce and sustain optimized product lines across the sector while providing a decisive advantage to the warfighter. 

We are looking for you to join our team as a Sr. Principal Network Engineer based out of San Diego, CA. As a Sr. Principal Network Engineer at Northrop Grumman, you will have a challenging and rewarding opportunity to be a part of our Enterprise-wide digital transformation. Through the use of Model-based Engineering, DevSecOps and Agile practices we continue to evolve how we deliver critical national defense products and capabilities for the warfighter. Our success is grounded in our ability to embrace change, move quickly and continuously drive innovation. The successful candidate will be collaborative, open, transparent, and team-oriented with a focus on team empowerment & shared responsibility, flexibility, continuous learning, and a culture of automation.

  

What You’ll get to Do:

Roles and Responsibilities:

  • Perform as a consultant in highly specialized, leading edge information technologies and methodologies
  • Perform hardware and software installation, configuration, and maintenance
  • Comply with cyber requirements, which may include routine system checks for antivirus, logging, and network system services
  • Recommend and implement approved system enhancements that will improve the performance and reliability of the system including installing, upgrading/patching, monitoring, problem resolution, and configuration management
  • Solve complex problems across disciplines in an Agile, Networking, and Software environment
  • Opportunity to travel for system installations, test support, and customer demos

Qualifications:

 Basic Qualifications for Sr. Principal Network Engineer:

  • Bachelors degree in science, engineering, or related discipline with 8 years of experience; OR 6 years of relevant experience with a Masters degree; OR 4 years of experience with STEM PhD degree
    • An additional 4 years of relevant experience can be considered in lieu of a Bachelor degree.
  • Experience with multi-vendor Segment Routing experience including SR-MPLS or SRv6 with automated traffic engineering and QoS
  • Experience Operating Cisco SDWAN and Juniper Session Smart Router fabrics including conductor failover
  • Knowledge of high-performance fabrics including InfiniBand and RoCE or RDMA for AI and ML cluster networking
  • Ability to construct and operate digital twin networks for pre-deployment validation and resilience testing
  • Experience building and operating STIG automation including drift detection, reporting, and mitigation tooling
  • Must be a US Citizen
  • Clearance: The ability to obtain and maintain a U.S Government Secret clearance is required.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience translating ambiguous business and sales commitments into deliverable technical scope
  • Experience operating with significant latitude in setting technical objectives and delivering against long-range goals
  • Ability to represent the organization to senior internal and external stakeholders on technical matters

This position is contingent upon clearance, customer approval, and funding.

Primary Level Salary Range: $129,300.00 - $193,900.00

The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions.

Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.

The application period for the job is estimated to be 20 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates.

Northrop Grumman is an Equal Opportunity Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age, veteran status, disability, or any other protected class. For our complete EEO and pay transparency statement, please visit http://www.northropgrumman.com/EEO. U.S. Citizenship is required for all positions with a government clearance and certain other restricted positions.

Sign up for Job Alerts