Associate Software Developer

About the Role

FTI Defense is seeking an early career Software Developer to support the Naval Safety Command in Norfolk, VA. This is an opportunity for recent Bachelor’s graduates, students pursuing or holding Master’s degrees, or PhD students to apply software development skills to real-world, mission-focused solutions supporting the U.S. Navy.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, document, test, and debug new and existing software applications and solutions.
• Develop and maintain data pipelines and support data transformation activities.
• Analyze code, identify causes of errors, troubleshoot problems, and improve existing applications.
• Participate in the full software development lifecycle: requirements analysis, design, development, testing, and implementation.
• Work with Software Engineers, Data Scientists, and end users to prototype, refine, test, and deploy solutions.
• Help productionize analytical and AI models developed by Data Scientists and integrate them into operational applications and workflows.
• Write modular functions, classes, packages, and reusable software components.
• Use Git and modern source control practices to collaborate with other developers.
• Develop automated tests and quality checks to improve software reliability and maintainability.
• Support dashboard development, data visualization, recurring reporting, and other customer-facing analytical products.
• Participate in technical discussions with customers and learn how operational requirements are translated into production software solutions.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Must have an active Department of Defense Secret clearance or above.
• Must be in the Norfolk, VA commutable area.
• Experience developing software using Python, R, C#, Angular, or comparable programming languages and frameworks.
• Experience writing modular code, including functions, classes, or packages.
• Exposure to Git or another modern source control platform.
• Familiarity with software testing, debugging, data transformation, or software quality practices.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts and collaborate with both technical and nontechnical team members.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field.
• Candidates currently pursuing a Master’s degree, as well as Master’s graduates and current PhD students, are encouraged to apply.
• Hands-on software development experience gained through a capstone, academic project, graduate research, internship, research assistantship, personal development project, or other substantive technical work.

Additional Experience That Would Be Valuable

• Experience does not need to come from a traditional software development job. Capstone projects, academic projects, research, internships, and substantive personal development projects all count.
• Exposure to Databricks, Apache Spark, data pipelines, automated testing, Agile or Scrum development, Qlik, Tableau, or Python-based visualization tools.
• Experience developing applications or pipelines incorporating machine learning, AI, predictive analytics, or large data sets.