Engineering Manager

Orbis; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Retirement matching

Paid time off

Comprehensive benefits

Job summary

Orbis is seeking a Senior Engineering Leader to steer the Orbis AI portfolio—Agent Catalog, OSINT Agent Harness, and Pulse Analytics. You will grow and guide a team of software and research engineers, set cadence, and ensure accuracy, explainability, and reliability for mission users.

Travel up to 20% for customer engagement, integration, and team collaboration; you will drive end-to-end delivery, architecture across cloud, on-premises, and edge, and uphold product principles and high standards

Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 2+ years directly managing engineers.
• Track record of delivering meaningful product surfaces on committed timelines.
• Technical depth in distributed systems, backend services, or AI and data platforms.

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of software and research engineers, owning hiring, onboarding, performance, and career development.
• Own the team's delivery commitments end to end — scope, sequence, and land work each cycle, surfacing status and risk early.
• Drive the research-to-product path: set direction with product management, define what a result must demonstrate to become a roadmap commitment, and stop work that is not paying off.
• Enforce product principles — accuracy and trustworthiness, security and data sovereignty, rapid iteration, deploy anywhere, explainability, and performance.
• Establish engineering standards: design and code review, testing, observability, on-call, and incident follow-through.
• Guide architecture for cloud, on-premises, and edge environments from a single codebase.
• Clear cross-team blockers with product teams that consume Orbis AI capabilities.

Skills

Leadership

Distributed systems

Backend services

AI platforms

Hiring & mentoring

Communication

Travel readiness

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Company Overview

Orbis is a technology company that delivers sovereign intelligence and decision capabilities to the United States Government and its allies. We convert complex information and operational systems into decisive outcomes, giving public institutions and critical enterprises the tools to move faster, see clearer, and act first in an increasingly contested world.

Company Overview

Orbis is a technology company that delivers sovereign intelligence and decision capabilities to the United States Government and its allies. We convert complex information and operational systems into decisive outcomes, giving public institutions and critical enterprises the tools to move faster, see clearer, and act first in an increasingly contested world. We are not a consulting firm and not a systems integrator. Every Orbis team is built around practitioners who have operated at the mission edge, and every engagement is judged on one thing: whether it produces working capability, not slide decks. Solutions forged from experience; that is how we build, and it is how we hire.

Job Summary

Lead the engineering team behind the Orbis AI portfolio — the Agent Catalog, the OSINT Agent Harness, and Pulse Analytics — and be accountable for what it puts in front of users. You will grow a team of software and research engineers, set the cadence that turns applied research into deployed capability, and hold the line on the accuracy, explainability, and reliability that mission work demands. This role exists because Orbis AI is measured on capability delivered to users, not on experiments run.

Travel

Up to 20% for customer engagement, integration support, and team collaboration.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and grow a team of software and research engineers, owning hiring, onboarding, performance, and career development.
• Own the team's delivery commitments end to end — scope, sequence, and land work each cycle, surfacing status and risk early rather than at the deadline.
• Drive the research-to-product path: set direction with product management, define what a result must demonstrate to become a roadmap commitment, and stop work that is not paying off.
• Enforce the Orbis AI product principles — accuracy and trustworthiness, security and data sovereignty, rapid iteration, deploy anywhere, explainability, and performance — in design review rather than after release.
• Establish engineering standards that hold under pressure: design and code review, testing, observability, on-call, and incident follow-through.
• Guide architecture for systems that must run in cloud, on-premises, and edge environments from a single codebase.
• Clear cross-team blockers — dependencies, interface contracts, and competing priorities — with the product teams that consume Orbis AI capabilities.
• Travel up to 20% for customer engagement, integration support, and team collaboration.

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 2+ years directly managing engineers
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience
• Track record of delivering meaningful product surfaces on committed timelines
• Technical depth in distributed systems, backend services, or AI and data platforms sufficient to lead design review credibly
• Demonstrated ability to grow engineers, including leveling, performance conversations, and hiring against a bar
• Clear written and verbal communication with both engineering and non-engineering audiences
• Willingness to travel up to 20%

Desired Qualifications

• Experience managing teams building agentic AI, LLM-backed products, or knowledge-representation and retrieval systems
• Experience managing or partnering closely with applied research, and judgment about when a result is ready to productizeExperience shipping software into constrained environments such as on-premises, disconnected, or edge deployments
• Familiarity with containerized deployment (Docker, Kubernetes) across cloud, on-premises, and edge targets
• Prior experience in a government, national security, or otherwise regulated environment
• Experience with high-performance analytics or data-intensive systems operating close to the user and the data

Physical Requirements

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer
• Participation in virtual and in-person meetings
• Ability to attend planned meetings and/or work in classified spaces for extended periods within the specified work regions
• Travel: Up to 20% for customer engagement, integration support, and team collaboration.

Orbis Benefits

Beyond the opportunity to work alongside practitioners who have operated at the mission edge, joining Orbis means real ownership over outcomes that matter; the chance to build technology that gives the United States Government and its allies a genuine decision advantage, not just another dashboard. From competitive retirement matching to a PTO policy that encourages real time off, we're committed to creating an environment where our team can do their best work and still have a life outside of it. Our comprehensive benefits package is designed to meet the diverse needs of our employees and their families. A full list of benefits is shared with candidates following an initial conversation with our HR team, so you'll have a clear picture of the support and resources available to you as part of the Orbis team.

Orbis Locations

Orbis works in whatever arrangement the mission requires. Depending on the role, that might mean five days a week on a customer site, full-time in one of our offices, a hybrid schedule, or fully remote work; our team is spread across 25 states and four countries to match. We make sure every team member has the tools and access needed to do the work, wherever that work happens. Travel is common across many Orbis roles, particularly those supporting customer missions in the field. Orbis is headquartered in McLean, VA, with additional office locations in Taipei, Taiwan, and Canberra, Australia.

Orbis is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We are committed to providing a work environment free of discrimination and harassment, and we make employment decisions based on merit, qualifications, and business need. Orbis does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable law. Orbis complies with all applicable equal opportunity and non-discrimination laws in every jurisdiction in which we operate. Reasonable accommodation is available to applicants and employees with disabilities upon request.