Lead Principal Software Engineer - Skill Level 3

Distributed Application Orchestration and Kubernetes Platform

• Design scalable workflows for deploying and managing Kubernetes-native applications including multi-tenant and multi-cluster configurations
• Lead development of reusable Helm charts, GitOps templates, and deployment strategies
• Build system-aware controllers or agents that automate application lifecycle tasks
• Contribute to platform-wide architecture decisions including deployment strategy, multi-cluster config, and observability

Event-Driven and Agent-Based Systems

• Design and implement event-driven architectures using Kafka, controller patterns, or equivalent technologies
• Build and maintain custom Kubernetes controllers and operators using Go or Python
• Ensure event-driven systems meet reliability and security requirements for classified operations

Infrastructure Automation and DevOps

• Implement infrastructure-as-code using Terraform, cloud-init, Ansible, or equivalent tooling
• Support GitOps pipeline design using ArgoCD, Fleet, or equivalent
• Collaborate with DevOps and platform teams to ensure secure, compliant deployments
• Contribute to CI/CD pipeline design and code review standards

Leadership and Mentorship

• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers; conduct code reviews for reliability and security
• Guide the team through design decisions and engineering tradeoffs
• Help shape internal standards, shared tooling, and reusable component frameworks
• Think in systems, not just services: evaluate cross-cutting concerns in all designs

Security-Compliant Deployments

• Ensure containerized deployments adhere to DISA STIGs and program security policies
• Balance automation and operator oversight in classified environments
• Support secure secrets management and certificate lifecycle integration in Kubernetes

• Fort Meade on-site SCIF experience

• GitOps - ArgoCD or Fleet

• Go (Golang) or Python cloud-native development

• Helm chart development and templating

• Infrastructure-as-code - Terraform or Ansible

• Kubernetes - CRDs, Helm, multi-tenant deployments

• Kubernetes operator/controller development

• Secrets management in Kubernetes

• Technical mentorship and code review leadership, Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field. Equivalent experience may be substituted. Experience: 8+ years of software engineering experience, with majority in cloud-native, Kubernetes-based, or distributed systems contexts. Additional Required Qualifications:

• Active TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Polygraph - must be active prior to start

• Deep experience coding in Go and/or Python in cloud-native contexts

• Strong Kubernetes expertise: CRDs, Helm, GitOps, multi-tenant deployments

• Experience with event-driven or agent-based systems (Kafka, controller patterns)

• Familiarity with infrastructure automation (Terraform, Ansible)

• Demonstrated end-to-end system component delivery ownership

• Proven mentorship and technical leadership capability

• Comfortable balancing automation with operator oversight in classified environments

Desired Skills

• TypeScript for frontend or tooling development
• OpenShift or Rancher Government Solutions in air-gapped deployments
• Service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd)
• Observability tooling: Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry
• AWS GovCloud, C2S/SC2S classified cloud experience
• Cross-domain solution (CDS) experience
• DoD 8140 IASAE Level II or III (CASP+, CISSP)