Lead - Staff/Principal Software Engineer
$90k/y-$140k/y
2 days ago
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OnsiteFull-timeMid
Summary
Skylight is seeking a Lead - Staff/Principal Software Engineer to join their team in Washington, DC. The role involves leading technical direction for products and platforms while ensuring systems are secure, resilient, and scalable.
About the Role
As a Lead - Staff/Principal Software Engineer, you will combine hands-on development with technical leadership to guide strategy and delivery. You will design and build services with an emphasis on reliability, security, and simplicity, while standardizing engineering practices and improving observability. You will also mentor engineers and prepare federal teams to sustain improvements through training and reusable resources.
About You
Required:
- Experience leading engineering for complex, production systems and delivering measurable outcomes.
- Strong hands-on skills building services and APIs in a modern language and runtime, with clean, reliable, reusable code.
- Familiarity with modern delivery practices including CI/CD, automated testing, and code review.
- Proficiency with IaC and environment automation.
- Understanding of secure software practices and how to integrate compliance into delivery.
- Knowledge of data persistence and patterns for building resilient, observable services.
- Clear communication skills with executives and cross-functional teams.
- Commitment to equipping federal teams with documentation, training, and mentoring.
- Ability to work effectively in a professional services environment.
- Passion for improving public outcomes through great government services.
- Ability to spend time on-site at HHS in Washington, DC.
Preferred:
- Experience with containers and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) or platform engineering.
- Background in cloud and application modernization, integrations, or shared services at enterprise scale.
- Familiarity with compliance and security environments such as ATO, FedRAMP, or FISMA.
- Experience guiding cost, performance, and reliability tradeoffs across multiple teams.
- Track record of mentoring engineers and raising engineering practices across organizations.
- Experience working effectively on hybrid or distributed teams.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
- Short-term and long-term disability insurance.
- Life and AD&D insurance.
- Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account.
- Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period.
- Flexible paid time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays.
- Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents.
- Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options.
- Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development.
- Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases.
- Flexible, remote-friendly work environment.
Skylight
Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services.
Washington DC-Baltimore Area