Lead Principal Software Engineer = QK Pos: 795 - Software Engineer (SWE) - Skill Level 3

• We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer (Level 3) to support a mission-critical program within the Intelligence Community at Fort Meade, MD. This is an on-site SCIF position requiring a TS/SCI clearance with an active Full Scope Polygraph prior to consideration.
• The SWE Level 3 is a senior engineer capable of designing, implementing, and improving distributed application orchestration logic across a Kubernetes-native platform in a classified environment. This role carries architectural authority and mentorship responsibility: the successful candidate will lead the development of reusable Helm charts, GitOps templates, and deployment strategies; contribute to platform-wide architecture decisions; and guide junior engineers through design decisions and tradeoffs., 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

Software Engineering, Software Engineering, Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), Full Scope Polygraph, Intelligence Community, Top Secret Clearance, Mentoring, Distributed Applications, Architectural Services, * 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)