Principal Software Research Engineer

Are you a creative, risk-taking researcher who excels at driving innovation from the lab into the real world? Do you thrive on solving the greatest challenges in distributed systems—from AI at the edge and cybersecurity to software-defined networking—for the world’s most important autonomous machines? If you are a long-term thinker who wants to work at the intersection of product development and field-proven technology, this role is for you!

In this role, you will join a unique research team rated in the top 1% in the country for research commercialization success. As our Principal Distributed Systems Research Engineer, you won't just be conducting research that "dies in the lab"—you will be the driving force maintaining our status as the most advanced software infrastructure in the industry, ushering in the new era of autonomous vehicles, medical robotics, and smart power systems.

You will conduct cutting-edge research in distributed systems — building on a proven, data-centric foundation while exploring the hardest open problems across the full stack, from how intelligent machines communicate to how they decide and act in the real world.

✨ What You’ll Do / Responsibilities

You will work with a team of experts researching emerging technologies, coming up with novel solutions for the problems posed by our research sponsors, exploring new concepts for products, prototyping ideas, and leading small teams to develop and to enhance advanced features related to RTI’s secure real-time connectivity platform, Connext. This is an individual contributor role. Duties will include:

• Innovate new solutions that will form the foundation of secure, adaptable, and fast distributed systems.
• Create and execute long-term strategic research activities.
• Work with the business development team to define research areas of interest and define interesting research proposal topics.
• Write research proposals and project reports.
• Execute and lead research contracts to push our technology forward. Serve in the role of Principal Investigator and/or Staff Member on externally-funded research projects.
• Actively interface with research project sponsors, customers, research partners, and prospects.
• Keeping abreast of emerging technology trends and sharing your insights across RTI.
• Communicate technical innovations through papers and presentations.
• Support the transition of promising technical innovations to product including customer trials, coordinating with product management, and working closely with the engineering team to design, develop, test and support this transition.

🎯 What We’re Looking For / Requirements

• Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related field. Studies related to distributed systems, peer-to-peer networks, or computer networking. Solid understanding of computer network protocols; network and system programming, and real-time and/or high-performance applications.
• 7+ years of experience in distributed systems research.
• Excellent written communications skills, and evidence of research publications. Experience writing and winning proposals, and research project management.
• Solid programming skills (e.g. C/C++, Java, Python or other scripting languages).
• Demonstrated ability to work with cutting edge technology/hardware with little to no support.
• Ability to work successfully / actively engage with a highly distributed team.
• U.S. citizenship required. Work to be performed for this position relates to federal government contracts, which require U.S. citizenship.

Don’t meet every single requirement? At RTI, we are dedicated to building a fair and inclusive workplace so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t perfectly align with all qualifications in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway! You may be just the right candidate for this or another one of our open roles. Learn more about our commitment to our team, here!

🌟 What We Offer You

• Flexible working schedule.
• Hybrid working + Home Office Stipend to cover the costs of working from home.
• Flexible Paid Time Off + “Real Vacation Bonus,” an additional bonus for taking more than 1-week of uninterrupted vacation.
• Competitive…