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

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

Location (Onsite, Remote, or Hybrid?): Fort Meade, MD (ONSITE)

Contract Duration: Contract until 03/25/2031

Position Overview

• 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.

Key Responsibilities

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

Qualifications

• 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)