Director of Engineering

Seekr • Reston, VA

5d • Hybrid

About The Position

Seekr is seeking a Software Engineering Director to lead the team responsible for scaling and productionizing applications in its federal solutions portfolio. The role partners with AI engineers, software developers, product leaders, and program stakeholders to solve mission-centric problems across commercial cloud, AWS GovCloud, and fully disconnected networks. The Director will build and lead a high-performing engineering team focused on making applications performant, scalable, secure, and durable; set technical direction; establish ownership and delivery practices; develop engineering talent; and guide solutions through security accreditation so they can be used in real-world mission environments.

The Director is accountable for staffing, building, deploying, and accrediting federal solutions, and for ensuring engineering decisions remain effective across multiple programs over time. The role calls for adaptability as requirements, deployment targets, customer feedback, and security controls change. It also requires guiding teams from functional prototypes to stable, scalable, accredited services, and helping teams operate effectively in environments with limited observability and access.

Seekr describes itself as a provider of explainable and trustworthy AI for mission-critical decisions in enterprise, government, and regulated industries. Its SeekrFlow platform provides secure, auditable AI solutions across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments. The company works with defense, finance, telecom, and critical infrastructure organizations.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of professional software engineering experience for the Director level.
• At least 1 year leading engineering teams that build and operate large-scale distributed systems.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Demonstrated success leading engineers and delivering production systems, with technical depth to guide architecture, debugging, and operational decisions.
• Technical experience sufficient to lead teams working with Python, including async patterns, packaging, and dependency management.
• Experience with PostgreSQL or a comparable relational database management system.
• Experience with RESTful API design; FastAPI is preferred.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Helm.
• Knowledge of distributed systems fundamentals, including idempotency, retries, eventual consistency, queueing, failure isolation, and graceful degradation.
• Experience with CI/CD; GitLab CI is preferred.
• Experience with automated testing, including unit, integration, and end-to-end testing.
• Experience with observability, including structured logging, performance metrics, and tracing.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to explain architecture tradeoffs, including approaches that did not work and how the team adapted.
• Ability to help debug systems in environments that cannot be reproduced locally, using limited evidence such as logs and stack traces.
• Experience leading teams that ship AI-backed features such as LLM inference, agents, or retrieval, and sound judgment about when to use them.

Nice To Haves

• FastAPI experience.
• GitLab CI experience.
• Experience using AI coding assistants such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or similar while upholding review, testing, security, and ownership standards.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop software engineers working closely with AI engineers to deliver high-quality, production-ready features.
• Own team execution and the path from functional prototype to stable, scalable, accredited service.
• Set technical direction, drive sound decisions, and establish and enforce engineering best practices across the federal engineering team.
• Guide the design and delivery of systems that satisfy security controls as a first-class requirement.
• Ensure the team builds and maintains hardened container images, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment artifacts for cloud and restricted or air-gapped environments.
• Lead incident response and root cause analysis for production issues in environments with limited observability and access.
• Partner with Product, Program, Security, and customer-facing leaders to prioritize work, manage delivery risk, and translate requirements into actionable engineering plans.
• Hire, coach, and retain engineers; set expectations; provide regular feedback; and create development opportunities through code review, design review, pairing, and delegated ownership.
• Guide team architecture, debugging, and operational decisions, including adapting when previous approaches do not work.
• Establish responsible practices for AI coding assistants, maintaining standards for review, testing, security, and code ownership.
• Guide teams building AI-backed features such as LLM inference, agents, and retrieval, and assess when those approaches are appropriate.

Benefits

• Equity ownership through RSUs.
• Unlimited paid time off.
• 14 paid company holidays.
• Flexible hybrid work environment with offices in Reston, Virginia, and Austin, Texas.
• Role-appropriate compensation that may include base salary, bonuses, or commission plans depending on role.
• 401(k) with company matching.
• Medical, dental, vision, and life insurance coverage starting on day one, for employees and their families.
• Paid parental leave for birth, adoption, or foster placement.
• The role may be eligible for annual bonus, equity, and other incentive compensation.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director