Manager, Software Engineering

Default Brand
Herndon, VA, United States
3 months ago

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Experience level
Experienced
Experience required
3 years minimum
Working hours
Regular working hours

Tech stack

.NET Framework Artificial Intelligence Amazon Web Services Automation of Tests Microsoft Azure C Sharp (Programming Language) Mobile Application Development Cloud Engineering Code Generation Software Quality Code Review Continuous Integration
+14 more
Federated Identity Management Identity and Access Management Python (Programming Language) Public Key Infrastructure Systems Development Life Cycle Software Engineering TypeScript GitHub Copilot Containerization AngularJS Kubernetes Production Code Terraform Microservices

Job description

This role reports to the Director, R&D Engineering and operates in Exostar’s FedRAMP Moderate/CMMC Level 2 environment serving defense primes including Boeing and BAE Systems. What You’ll Own

  • Lead a team of software engineers building production features across Exostar’s identity, credentialing, and supply chain security platform.
  • Own the technical quality of your team’s output - architecture decisions, PR reviews, code quality, and production reliability.
  • Drive sprint execution: planning, backlog refinement, dependency management, and delivery against committed milestones.
  • Identify and resolve blockers before they become delays - elevate when needed but own the outcome.
  • Establish and maintain engineering metrics: deployment frequency, change failure rate, cycle time, defect escape rate.

AI-Native Engineering Leadership

  • Use Claude Code and GitHub Copilot daily in your own workflow - not as optional productivity tools, but as standard practice.
  • Model AI-native development for your team: code generation, agentic workflows, AI-assisted PR review, and automated testing.
  • Drive adoption across your team: coach skeptics, celebrate early adopters, measure impact, and share learnings org-wide.
  • Stay current on the AI tooling landscape - surface new tools and workflows to the Director when they’re worth evaluating.
  • Partner with product managers to translate roadmap priorities into engineering scope - push back on ambiguity, not on accountability.
  • Participate in quarterly planning: capacity estimation, sequencing, and dependency identification across teams.
  • Maintain clear line of sight from customer commitments to sprint execution for your team.
  • Surface engineering constraints to product early - don’t absorb scope silently, negotiate it explicitly.
  • Build and sustain a strong engineering team by hiring well, developing talent, addressing performance gaps, and making tough decisions when required.
  • Lead consistent 1:1 conversation that prioritizes coaching, development, and long-term impact.
  • Build a team culture of end-to-end ownership: engineers who ship, monitor, and stand behind their systems in production.
  • Partner with the Director on career development frameworks and internal promotion pipelines.

Requirements

  • 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years in an engineering leadership capacity managing a team.
  • Hands-on daily user of AI coding tools - Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent. You use these yourself, not just advocate for them.
  • Comfortable in code: conduct meaningful PR reviews, write production code when it unblocks the team, and can challenge architecture decisions with technical depth.
  • Cloud-native engineering experience on Azure or AWS - microservices, containerization, CI/CD, IaC.
  • Strong written and verbal communication - write crisp engineering specs and hold your own in cross-functional planning sessions.
  • U.S. Person. We are not able to consider candidates requiring sponsorship., * Experience in a FedRAMP, CMMC, HIPAA, or equivalent regulated environment - understanding of how compliance requirements land in the SDLC.
  • Exostar’s primary stack: C#/.NET, Angular, Python, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Terraform.
  • IAM, PKI, credentialing, or federated identity domain experience.
  • Experience building or operating agentic AI workflows: MCP, multi-tool pipelines, AI-assisted code review or testing.
  • Track record of driving AI tooling adoption at team scale - teach-the-trainer models, adoption measurement, coaching skeptics.

Benefits & conditions

  • AI-native engineering org: Claude Code and Copilot are standard, not experiments. Leadership actively backs it and uses it.
  • Real compliance stakes: FedRAMP Moderate, CMMC 110/110, Azure Gov multi-tenant. Engineering decisions matter here.
  • PE-backed (Arlington Capital Partners) with the resources to invest and the urgency to execute.
  • Direct line to a Director who is hands-on, technically credible, and invested in your development.
  • Mission-driven: securing collaboration infrastructure for the Defense Industrial Base.

About Exostar

Exostar’s cloud-based platforms create exclusive communities within the Aerospace and Defense, Life Sciences, and other highly regulated industries where members securely collaborate, share information, and operate compliantly. Within these communities we build trust. By analyzing community data, we provide insights and intelligence enabling organizations to make better, timelier decisions, mitigate risk, and operate more efficiently.

  • We believe in employee development: we promote internally and provide training and educational assistance.
  • We provide a fun, engaged workplace, with social and community-building events.
  • We offer comprehensive benefits and flexible time off plans.

About the company

You will use AI coding tools - Claude Code, GitHub Copilot - yourself, daily. You will model that behavior for your team. AI-native development is not optional at Exostar; it’s how we build.

Apply for this position

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