Principal Innovation Engineer at Parsons in Reston, VA

In a world of possibilities, pursue one with endless opportunities. Imagine Next!

At Parsons, you can imagine a career where you thrive, work with exceptional people, and be yourself. Guided by our leadership vision of valuing people, embracing agility, and fostering growth, we cultivate an innovative culture that empowers you to achieve your full potential. Unleash your talent and redefine what’s possible.

Job Description:

Parsons is seeking a Principal Innovation Engineer to drive applied innovation for a mission-critical global identity and mobility platform deployed across a wide range of operating environments, from remote and austere locations to high-throughput modern facilities to cloud-forward architectures.

This is a hands-on senior engineering role for a technologist who can identify promising technologies, evaluate them against real operational needs, build compelling prototypes and demonstrations, and help transition the best ideas into production-ready capabilities. The right candidate will be comfortable working across software, cloud, edge systems, biometrics/peripherals, networking, resilience engineering, and operational workflows.

We are looking for someone who can help ensure our platform remains modern, resilient, and visibly state-of-the-art to customers, stakeholders, and industry peers.

What you will do

• Identify, evaluate, and prototype new technologies that improve a globally deployed mission-critical platform

• Build working demonstrations, proof-of-concepts, and pilot implementations that can be shown to internal leadership, customers, and external stakeholders

• Explore innovation across areas such as:

  • digital identity and verification
  • biometrics and contactless capture
  • edge computing and low-power deployments
  • resilient/offline-first operations
  • cloud-native modernization
  • analytics and AI-assisted workflows
  • automation and operator experience
  • secure peripherals and smart devices

• Assess emerging commercial and open technologies for fit, maturity, operational value, security implications, and deployability

• Translate innovation ideas into practical architectures that can operate in low-bandwidth environments with intermittent connectivity, power-constraints, environmental challenges, or infrastructure limitations

• Assist leadership with transition from prototypes to implementation roadmaps

• Produce technical trade studies, architecture recommendations, demonstration plans, and innovation briefings

• Support technical presentations, showcases, and evaluations with customers, sponsors, and partners

• Shape an innovation pipeline from concept to prototype to fieldable capability

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in systems engineering, software engineering, platform engineering, or applied R&D

• Demonstrated experience turning emerging technology concepts into working prototypes or production capabilities

• Strong hands-on technical depth in several of the following:

  • distributed software systems
  • cloud platforms, especially AWS
  • edge or embedded deployments
  • networking or hybrid connectivity
  • identity or security systems
  • biometrics or device/peripheral integration
  • observability or operational analytics

• Experience evaluating technology not only for technical merit, but for operational realism, reliability, security, supportability, and lifecycle fit

• Experience working in mission-critical, operational, public sector, regulated, or globally distributed environments

• Strong communication skills with the ability to present complex ideas clearly to both engineers and non-technical decision makers

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with identity verification, biometrics, access-control, document technologies, automated gate/peripheral systems, or related domains
• Experience designing solutions for remote, austere, power-constrained, or intermittently connected environments
• Experience with Java-based distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architectures
• Experience with AWS, Terraform, and hybrid edge/cloud architectures
• Familiarity with technologies such as MongoDB, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, RabbitMQ/Kafka, Grafana, ELK, HashiCorp Consul, Nomad, and Vault
• Experience with AI/ML-enabled analytics, computer vision, anomaly detection, or intelligent automation
• Experience engaging with vendors, standards bodies, industry forums, or customer technical demonstrations

Why join Parsons in this role

• Work on visible, high-impact innovation with real operational relevance
• Help shape the future direction of a globally deployed platform operating in some of the most challenging environments
• Build demonstrable capabilities that influence customer confidence, program growth, and technical direction
• Operate at the intersection of edge systems, cloud, resilience, identity, security, and emerging technology
• Join a team where senior engineers can take ideas from concept to showcased capability to operational adoption

Security Clearance Requirement: None

This position is part of our Federal Solutions team.

The Federal Solutions segment delivers resources to our US government customers that ensure the success of missions around the globe. Our intelligent employees drive the state of the art as they provide services and solutions in the areas of defense, security, intelligence, infrastructure, and environmental. We promote a culture of excellence and close-knit teams that take pride in delivering, protecting, and sustaining our nation's most critical assets, from Earth to cyberspace. Throughout the company, our people are anticipating what’s next to deliver the solutions our customers need now.

Salary Range: $176,900.00 - $332,400.00

We value our employees and want our employees to take care of their overall wellbeing, which is why we offer best-in-class benefits such as medical, dental, vision, paid time off, Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), 401(k), life insurance, flexible work schedules, and holidays to fit your busy lifestyle!

Parsons is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other protected status.

We truly invest and care about our employee’s wellbeing and provide endless growth opportunities as the sky is the limit, so aim for the stars! Imagine next and join the Parsons quest—APPLY TODAY!

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