Communications 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.

The MITRE National Security Sector (MNS) and its National Security Engineering Center (NSEC) FFRDC are dedicated to solving the nation’s most complex security challenges—spanning the Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community, interagency partners, industry, and international allies. As a trusted systems engineering and integration partner, NSEC bridges organizational boundaries to enable cross-cutting solutions, proactively assessing capability gaps and focusing on mission outcomes rather than isolated systems or processes. This position requires creative problem solving through novel applications of communications engineering, systems architecture, and software principles in collaboration with diverse and geographically dispersed teams. 

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Analyzing complex communications, networking and data link systems and provide recommendations to US Naval sponsors
• Defining capability and interoperability gaps, overlaps, opportunities, and constraints
• Work in partnership with multiple stakeholders to develop optimal solutions accounting for various perspective and variables

Basic Qualifications:

• Typically requires a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or related degree, or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years’ experience; or equivalent combination of related education and work experience.
• Possess active Secret clearance with the ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI clearance
• U.S. Citizenship required
• Familiarity with Link-16 and Link-22 network designs and configurations
• Familiarity with product lifecycle, trade studies, requirements, and interface definitions
• Familiarity with tactical data link interfaces into shore-based, terrestrial networks.
• Possess the familiarity with communications engineering processes required to provide unbiased advice, formulate courses of action, analyze programs, and make recommendations
• Proven ability to work independently to learn new technologies, techniques, processes, software languages, platforms, and systems
• Strong communication (verbal, written, and presentation) and interpersonal skills to interact with technical peers and government sponsors
• This position requires a minimum of 3 days a week on-site.
   

Preferred Qualifications:

• An active TS/SCI clearance
• Five years’ experience as a certified Joint Interface Control Officer (JICO)
• Familiarity with MIL-STD-6016 and MIL-STD-6017 messaging
• Familiarity with Joint Range Extension (JRE) systems and MIL-STD-3011 protocols (JREAP–A, JREAP-B and JREAP-C)
• Analysis of operational mission sets/threads to inform network requirements
• Ability to capture information exchange requirements (IERS) for Link-16 missions
• Familiarity with Naval C4I & Space systems from technical and/or operational perspectives

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

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:

$156,400 - $195,500 - $234,600 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.