Senior Database Engineer – GSE (Ground Support Engineer)

Position Title: Senior Database Engineer – GSE (Ground Support Engineer) 
Requisition ID: 1809
Position Location: Sterling, Virginia
Position Reports To: Director of Embedded Software Engineering & GSE 
Supervises Others: No

At Trident Systems, we believe that strong engineering principles are fundamental to driving innovation and solving complex problems. We promote a culture characterized by rigorous engineering practices and a commitment to continuous improvement. This is achieved by leveraging our organization's collective expertise through collaborative development processes, which include thorough design and peer reviews. We can deliver innovative, high-performance solutions that meet our customers' evolving requirements by integrating our specialized knowledge in aerospace electronic systems with appropriately scaled development methodologies.

We are a mission partner supporting DoD, Intelligence Community, and Civil space customers. We develop complex, radiation effects mitigated, designs that balance competing requirements in modern space programs, delivering cutting-edge solutions that enable our customers to achieve more in space.

Position Summary

The Senior Database Engineer designs, develops, and maintains database systems that support production automation, engineering operations, manufacturing workflows, hardware traceability, test automation, and internal business processes. This role works closely with software, test, production, quality, and engineering teams to build reliable data infrastructure that enables scalable delivery of aerospace electronics products.

The ideal candidate combines strong database engineering fundamentals with practical software development skills and an understanding of automation-driven engineering environments.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Design, develop, deploy, and maintain databases supporting production automation, manufacturing workflows, engineering operations, test systems, and product traceability.
• Develop database schemas, data models, relationships, indexing strategies, and data access architectures for internal engineering and production systems.
• Support internal software tools that interface with production and engineering databases.
• Build and maintain APIs, services, or backend integrations that connect automation tools, engineering applications, production systems, and reporting workflows.
• Support collection, storage, retrieval, and analysis of manufacturing, test, telemetry, traceability, and product lifecycle data.
• Optimize database performance, reliability, backup strategies, availability, and long-term maintainability.
• Support data integrity, access control, configuration management, and operational continuity.
• Troubleshoot issues involving application/database interactions, schema design, performance bottlenecks, connectivity, and automation workflows.
• Partner with engineering, production, quality, and software teams to define scalable data workflows and process automation solutions.
• Support migration or integration with enterprise systems where applicable.
• Maintain technical documentation for schemas, interfaces, architecture, deployment, backup, and operational procedures.
• Support off-site work or travel, as needed.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

 Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum of 6 years of experience designing, developing, and maintaining production or engineering database systems.
• Strong experience with relational database systems such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, or similar platforms.
• Experience with schema design, indexing, normalization, query optimization, backup/recovery, and database performance tuning.
• Experience developing software or backend services that interact with database systems.
• Experience troubleshooting database-backed applications in operational environments.
• Strong understanding of data integrity, transactional systems, access control, and reliability practices.
• Strong communication, documentation, and problem-solving skills. 

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting manufacturing, test automation, engineering operations, production systems, or traceability workflows.
• Experience developing APIs, backend applications, automation integrations, or internal engineering software.
• Familiarity with Python, C#, Java, JavaScript, PowerShell, or similar development languages.
• Experience with web applications, dashboards, reporting tools, or internal automation systems.
• Experience in aerospace, defense, electronics manufacturing, or high-reliability technical environments.
• Familiarity with ERP, PLM, MES, quality systems, or engineering data workflows.
• Experience with cloud-hosted or hybrid database deployments.
• Strong systems thinking and ability to work across software, production, and engineering domains.

Pay Information

Full-Time Salary Range: $99,000 - $185,000
Please Note: Actual compensation offered will be determined based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience, skills, education, certifications, internal equity, business considerations, and geographic location where applicable.

Benefits 

Hired applicants may be eligible for benefits including but not limited to:

• Health benefits
  • Medical 
  • Dental 
  • Vision
  • Basic life with AD&D
  • Short term disability
  • Long term disability
  • Ancillary (Voluntary life with AD&D, accident, critical illness, hospital, and pet)
  • Spending accounts (HSA, FSA, and DCFSA)
• Paid time off
• Holidays
• 401(k) (including company match)
• Tuition reimbursement
• Leaves (Parental, maternity, and military)
• Annual discretionary bonus (for eligible roles)

Trident Systems reserves the right to change or assign other duties to this position. 

Trident Solutions is an affirmative action and equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. To request reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact [email protected].

Pay Transparency: The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor’s legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)