Lead Principal Software Engineer - TS/SCI

The Fountain Group; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 123,984 - 137,760; Full time

Job summary

A leading software solutions provider is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to support critical programs within the Intelligence Community. The position requires an active TS/SCI clearance and expertise in Kubernetes. The successful candidate will design, implement, and enhance applications in classified environments, while leading projects and mentoring junior staff. Strong programming skills in Go or Python are needed, along with a deep understanding of cloud-native development, making this an essential role for innovative software delivery.

Qualifications

• Active TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Polygraph required.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience focused on cloud-native or distributed systems.
• Experience mentoring and leading technical teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement distributed application orchestration logic.
• Lead the development of reusable Helm charts and deployment strategies.
• Guide junior engineers through design decisions.

Skills

Go

Python

Kubernetes expertise

Event-driven systems

Infrastructure automation

Technical leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Kafka

Prometheus

Grafana

AWS GovCloud

Job description

Top Secret/SCI with Active Full Scope Polygraph – must be active prior to start

Pay: $90-100/hour. W2 only.
Duration: 5 years
100% Onsite near Washington, DC
Employment Type: Full-Time Immediate

Position Overview

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to support a mission-critical program within the Intelligence Community. 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.

Qualifications

• Top Secret/SCI with Active Full Scope Polygraph – must be active prior to start
• Bachelor's degree preferred, equivalent experience may be substituted.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with majority in cloud-native, Kubernetes-based, or distributed systems contexts.

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)

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