Principal Software Engineer(Back End)

<h3>Accountabilities</h3><li>Define and drive the strategic direction of backend and full-stack engineering practices, architecture, and technical standards across the organization.</li><li>Design, develop, and maintain scalable, secure, and reliable distributed systems that support government customers and mission-critical services.</li><li>Lead the architecture and implementation of microservices, APIs, data pipelines, and cloud-native infrastructure to improve system performance, reliability, and scalability.</li><li>Deliver new features and enhancements to core services, including customer intake, application screening, information processing, and data dissemination.</li><li>Lead large-scale technical initiatives, including system modernization, migration from monolithic architectures to microservices, and the adoption of modern engineering technologies.</li><li>Establish and promote engineering best practices covering API design, data modeling, automated testing, observability, security, code quality, and documentation.</li><li>Develop shared libraries, reusable service frameworks, and infrastructure patterns that improve consistency, reduce complexity, and accelerate development across teams.</li><li>Design and optimize distributed system components, including event-driven architectures, asynchronous processing, caching strategies, database integrations, and data consistency mechanisms.</li><li>Oversee system reliability, monitoring, and performance through structured logging, distributed tracing, metrics, alerting, incident response, capacity planning, and disaster recovery strategies.</li><li>Champion secure software development and ensure appropriate implementation of authentication, authorization, encryption, secrets management, and other security controls.</li><li>Drive CI/CD automation, infrastructure as code, container orchestration, and DevOps practices to streamline delivery and improve operational efficiency.</li><li>Collaborate with product managers and cross-functional stakeholders to balance technical feasibility, business priorities, system performance, security, and cost considerations.</li><li>Mentor and coach engineers at all levels, establish backend engineering development pathways, and foster a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning.</li><li>Serve as a technical authority and strategic advisor, influencing architectural decisions and engineering standards across teams while communicating complex concepts clearly to technical and nontechnical audiences.</li><h2>Requirements</h2><li>At least 10 years of relevant software engineering experience, with a proven track record of designing, building, and delivering scalable, production-ready distributed systems with measurable business or operational impact.</li><li>U.S. citizenship is required, along with the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust 6C clearance.</li><li>Extensive experience architecting and implementing large-scale microservices and distributed systems with demanding throughput, availability, reliability, and performance requirements.</li><li>Strong proficiency in modern programming languages such as Java, Python, or comparable technologies, with a deep understanding of associated development tools and ecosystems.</li><li>Demonstrated expertise in cloud platforms, particularly Amazon Web Services (AWS), with familiarity with Azure or Google Cloud Platform considered valuable.</li><li>Solid understanding of distributed systems principles, including consistency models, failure handling, availability, partition tolerance, resilience patterns, and system design trade-offs.</li><li>Hands-on experience designing and developing REST, GraphQL, or comparable APIs, including API versioning, backward compatibility, and service integration strategies.</li><li>Experience with relational and NoSQL databases, data modeling, schema design, indexing, query optimization, data migration, and governance.</li><li>Familiarity with messaging systems and event-streaming technologies such as Kafka, Amazon SQS, and Amazon EventBridge, as well as asynchronous processing patterns.</li><li>Practical experience with Kubernetes, Amazon ECS, infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation, and modern DevOps practices.</li><li>Proven ability to establish and maintain CI/CD pipelines incorporating automated testing, security scanning, and reliable deployment strategies.</li><li>Strong knowledge of automated testing methodologies, including unit, integration, contract, and end-to-end testing, along with observability, monitoring, and incident management practices.</li><li>Experience leading system modernization initiatives, optimizing application performance and cloud costs, and designing resilient systems with circuit breakers, retry mechanisms, graceful degradation, and disaster recovery capabilities.</li><li>Demonstrated success leading complex technical initiatives from architectural vision through production implementation, influencing engineering decisions across multiple teams.</li><li>Excellent communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to engineers, product managers, executives, and external stakeholders.</li><li>A strong commitment to code quality, documentation, engineering standards, mentoring, and continuous improvement.</li><li>Familiarity with user experience principles and web development is beneficial, although backend engineering remains the primary focus.</li><h2>Benefits</h2><li>
<strong>Competitive compensation:</strong>Annual salary range of $147,292–$199,278, depending on experience, geographic location, and applicable contractual requirements.</li><li>
<strong>Remote work:</strong>Fully remote working arrangement with opportunities for flexible work schedules.</li><li>
<strong>Flexible working arrangements:</strong>Full flexible workweeks where operationally possible, supporting work-life balance.</li><li>
<strong>Healthcare coverage:</strong>Multiple medical plan options, including plans with Health Savings Accounts, as well as dental and vision insurance.</li><li>
<strong>Retirement planning:</strong>401(k) retirement savings plan with employer matching and pre-tax and post-tax contribution options, subject to applicable limits.</li><li>
<strong>Paid time off:</strong>Typically 15 days of paid leave per calendar year for eligible new employees, covering vacation, personal needs, and illness, prorated according to the start date.</li><li>
<strong>Paid holidays:</strong>10 paid holidays annually, with applicable proration based on the date of hire.</li><li>
<strong>Family support:</strong>Paid parental leave and a dedicated Paid Family Leave program offering eligible employees up to 160 hours of paid leave within a rolling 12-month period.</li><li>
<strong>Additional leave programs:</strong>Paid sick, personal, military, bereavement, and jury duty leave, subject to applicable policies.</li><li>
<strong>Income protection:</strong>Short-term and long-term disability benefits, life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment coverage, and additional accident and critical illness insurance options.</li><li>
<strong>Business travel protection:</strong>Business travel and accident insurance coverage or availability.</li><li>
<strong>Professional impact:</strong>Opportunities to work on complex, mission-critical technology initiatives involving cloud computing, distributed systems, software engineering, and digital modernization.</li><li>
<strong>Collaborative environment:</strong>Opportunities to mentor engineers, influence technical strategy, and contribute to engineering standards and organizational development.</li>