Is there a scientific arm of research I could go into as a software engineer that, by its nature, can’t be transmogrified into murdering millions of people?
Medicine generally has the opposite objective, and has plenty of funding and impact.
At national labs they need software engineers to build internal tools for scientists in different fields. DOE labs are not all murder building machines, in fact most aren't. They do all kinds of research depending on the location. DOE national labs are a big tent.