Tech Lead/Principal Engineer, Public Sector

Socket.dev; McLean (VA); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary time off

Industry-leading health benefits

Hybrid work flexibility

Career development support

Job summary

Exiger is hiring a Database Engineer to own the data plane patterns used by federal programs. You will build the database engineering practice, establishing reference schemas, replication and recovery patterns, and security postures within a FedRAMP boundary.

The role remains hands-on, operating shared data infrastructure and supporting program teams across engagements. You will lead in defining schema conventions, and deliver reusable tooling for backup, migration, and security.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of production database engineering at scale on major relational engines (PostgreSQL preferred).
• Strong query plan literacy; able to read EXPLAIN ANALYZE without a profiler.
• Production experience with zero-downtime schema migrations on live traffic.
• Production experience with at least one OLAP/analytics store (Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, ClickHouse).
• Production experience on AWS, particularly RDS/Aurora (PostgreSQL flavor preferred).
• Hands-on experience in a FedRAMP boundary (Moderate or High).
• Experience building database patterns/tools consumed by multiple teams (central DBRE/DBA).
• Familiarity with ATO continuous-monitoring cycle for databases.
• Strong customer-facing posture: explain data residency, retention, and encryption decisions.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Own the reference database posture programs: design of instances, replication topology, parameter tuning, connection management, and query plan health.
• Govern schema conventions across programs; treat schema as an interface to be consumed by other engineers.
• Build backup, restore, and disaster-recovery tooling; proven by real drills.
• Own database security patterns inside the FedRAMP boundary: encryption at rest/in transit, least-privilege access, audit logging.
• Develop zero-downtime migration tooling and schema-change tooling for live traffic.
• Collaborate with Platform Engineering on cluster topology and monitoring, and with Data Engineering on production-to-analytics seam.
• Support program teams operating on your patterns and provide on-call escalation for the data plane.
• Discuss data posture (residency, retention, encryption, access) in customer-context conversations.

Skills

PostgreSQL

AWS (RDS/Aurora)

Zero-downtime migrations

FedRAMP awareness

SQL performance/EXPLAIN ANALYZE

Secure data posture

Tools

AWS KMS

Job description

Who We Are:

Exiger transforms supply chains into a strategic advantage, advancing our mission to make the world a safer and more transparent place to succeed. Our AI platform, 1Exiger, delivers instant visibility into complex supplier ecosystems, leveraging proprietary data and advanced AI to surface risk, automate compliance, and unlock efficiencies and cost savings to strengthen long-term resilience. Trusted by 550+ global customers, including Fortune 500 companies and U.S. government agencies, Exiger is a recognized, award-winning leader in supply chain AI and a FedRAMP® authorized provider to the federal government.

Location: U.S. (Hybrid or Remote) Work Environment: Hybrid / Remote, with travel to customer sites as engagements require

About Exiger

Exiger is transforming how governments and global enterprises manage supply chain, risk, and compliance. Our flagship AI platform, 1Exiger, unifies supplier, product, part, component, and risk data into a single platform spanning Supply Chain, Risk & Compliance, and Software Supply Chain Security. Exiger serves more than 60 federal agencies and 150 Fortune 500 companies, is FedRAMP Authorized, and was named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Supplier Risk Management Solutions.

Exiger's EGS Delivery organization partners directly with U.S. federal agencies to deploy AI-driven supply chain, risk, and mission-intelligence capabilities. Our engineering team is centralized: we build reusable solutions once and replicate them across the federal programs we serve, working directly with the mission owners and program leadership who depend on them. Engineers here stay customer-facing while building for a portfolio, not a single program.

About the Role

We are hiring a Database Engineer to own the data plane patterns our federal programs run on. Rather than administering one program's databases, you will build the database engineering practice that every program inherits: reference schema conventions, replication and recovery patterns proven by real drills, zero-downtime migration tooling, and the security posture that keeps production data stores authorizable inside a FedRAMP boundary. When a new program stands up, its data plane starts from your patterns instead of from scratch.

The role stays hands-on and production-facing. You will operate shared data infrastructure, support program teams running data planes built on your patterns, carry escalation for the hardest database problems across engagements, and represent data posture (residency, retention, encryption, access) in customer-context conversations.

What You'll Do

• Own the reference database posture programs adopt: instance design, replication topology, parameter tuning, connection management, query plan health.
• Set and govern schema conventions across programs. Treat schema as an interface other engineers consume, and the conventions as a product they inherit.
• Build the backup, restore, and disaster-recovery patterns as reusable tooling, proven by real recovery drills, not program-by-program improvisation.
• Own database security patterns inside the FedRAMP boundary: encryption at rest and in transit, least-privilege access, audit logging, replicated across engagements.
• Build and maintain zero-downtime migration and schema change tooling program teams use on live traffic.
• Partner with Platform Engineering on the shared infrastructure seam (cluster topology, parameter groups, snapshot policy, monitoring) and with Data Engineering on the production-to-analytics seam.
• Support program teams operating on your patterns, and carry escalation on-call for the data plane across the portfolio.
• Sit in customer-context conversations about data posture (residency, retention, encryption, access) across programs.

What You Need

• 5+ years of production database engineering at scale on at least one major relational engine (PostgreSQL preferred; Aurora, MySQL, or Oracle at depth also acceptable).
• Strong query plan literacy; can read EXPLAIN ANALYZE and reason about it without a profiler.
• Production experience with zero-downtime schema migrations on live traffic.
• Production experience with at least one OLAP or analytics store (Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, ClickHouse).
• Production experience on AWS, particularly RDS / Aurora (PostgreSQL flavor preferred).
• Hands-on experience inside a FedRAMP boundary (Moderate or High).
• Experience building database patterns, tooling, or standards consumed by teams beyond your own (central DBRE / DBA practice experience is directly relevant).
• Familiarity with the database side of an ATO continuous-monitoring cycle.
• Strong customer-facing posture: comfortable explaining data residency, retention, and encryption decisions in front of a customer.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Government security clearance.

Nice to Have

• Hands-on experience with both row-store and column-store engines in the same environment.
• Familiarity with logical replication topologies (Postgres logical replication, AWS DMS) for CDC into an analytics layer.
• Experience with vector storage (pgvector, OpenSearch k-NN, Pinecone) for ML retrieval workloads.
• Experience with database security tooling at federal grade (TDE, Vault, AWS KMS with customer-managed keys).
• PostGIS or other spatial extension experience for geospatial domains.
• Experience operating in IL5, IL6, or JWICS environments.

Clearance Requirements

Active U.S. Government security clearance preferred (Secret minimum for most engagements; TS or TS/SCI required for a subset). Candidates without an active clearance must be able to obtain one. Clearance level will be confirmed at offer.

Why You'll Love Working at Exiger

• High-performance culture rooted in accountability, collaboration, and a shared commitment to excellence.
• Discretionary Time Off for all employees, with no maximum limits on time off.
• Industry leading health, vision, and dental benefits.
• Competitive compensation package.
• 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave.
• Flexible, hybrid approach to working from home and in the office where applicable.
• Focus on wellness and employee health through stipends and dedicated wellness programming.
• Purposeful career development programs with reimbursement provided for educational certifications.

Exiger is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

Exiger is named a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Supplier Risk Management, twice selected as one of Fast Company's 'Brands That Matter,' and recipient of the Third Party Risk Association's Innovator Award, Exiger's technology has been recognized by leading analyst evaluations and 50+ awards. Learn more at Exiger.com and follow Exiger on LinkedIn.

At Exiger, our values define how we work and why we lead. We are mission-inspired, imagination-driven, trust-anchored, and compassion-focused—committed to building technology that makes the world safer, more transparent, and more resilient.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or protected veteran status, or any other legally protected basis, in accordance with applicable law.

Exiger’s hybrid work policy is periodically reviewed and adjusted to align with evolving business needs.