Senior Staff Software Engineer

Bluestaq•Colorado Springs, CO

About The Position

Senior Staff Software Engineers are the connective tissue across engineering at Bluestaq. You don't just own a system—you influence how multiple teams build their systems. The platform improvements you drive, the standards you establish, and the coaching you provide to Staff and Senior engineers produce compounding effects on delivery speed and quality across the organization. Your decisions directly affect the reliability, security, and scalability of the software Bluestaq's customers and mission partners depend on. At Bluestaq, we build secure data platforms that matter for space missions, national defense, healthcare systems, and commercial innovation. Founded in 2018, we've become a leader in enterprise software and secure data management by staying focused on what counts: modern architecture, operational excellence, and mission impact. We're engineers, problem-solvers, and builders who take the mission seriously, but not ourselves. We automate the repeatable, question the status quo, and design systems that are as reliable as they are scalable. Whether we're supporting space, defense systems, or healthcare advancements, we build with the same principles: cloud-native solutions, security by design, and relentless simplicity.

Requirements

Exceptional proficiency across multiple software engineering domains: distributed systems, API design, data architecture, frontend or backend development, and platform engineering
Demonstrated ability to lead multi-team technical initiatives from concept through production at organizational scale, with measurable impact on reliability, performance, or engineering velocity
Deep expertise in large-scale system design, platform architecture, and cross-cutting technical strategy spanning multiple stacks and deployment environments
Strong track record of driving cross-team engineering improvements in testing, observability, CI/CD, security, or shared infrastructure
Proven ability to identify and resolve systemic technical risks and fragmentation across multiple codebases and teams
Demonstrated success coaching and developing Staff-level engineers into broader technical leaders
Excellent technical communication skills: ability to influence and align multiple engineering teams behind shared architectural decisions, patterns, and standards
Experience navigating cross-team organizational dynamics and delivering technical outcomes across reporting boundaries without formal authority
You use modern AI tools with judgment: integrating them into workflows where they're impactful, reviewing their outputs, and handling proprietary or sensitive data responsibly.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing or owning shared platforms, internal developer tooling, or cross-cutting infrastructure components used across multiple product teams
Background in large-scale system migrations, performance engineering programs, or multi-year reliability initiatives
Deep familiarity with DoD, intelligence community, or federal software delivery and security standards including RMF, NIST 800-53, or STIG compliance
Experience managing architectural technical debt at scale and driving simplification programs across large, complex codebases
History of developing Staff-level technical talent through direct coaching, structured mentorship, or technical leadership programs
Contributions to engineering strategy, hiring, or technical community beyond immediate team scope
External recognition as a technical leader: publications, conference presentations, open-source project ownership, or standards contributions

Responsibilities

Lead engineering efforts that span multiple teams or product areas, including major re-architectures, new platform capabilities, and cross-cutting reliability or security programs
Serve as a key technical partner for program leadership, product management, and cross-functional leads
Design and drive implementation of large-scale architectures: platform components, shared libraries, major system migrations, and cross-product integrations
Apply deep expertise across the full stack—backend, frontend, data, and infrastructure—to navigate complex performance, scalability, reliability, and security tradeoffs
Drive improvements in core engineering practices across multiple teams: testing strategy, observability, CI/CD pipelines, coding standards, and security posture
Identify and reduce unnecessary technical fragmentation by harmonizing patterns, tooling, and shared standards across engineering groups
Own cross-team technical outcomes with minimal direction, anticipating long-term risk and downstream impact before they become urgent
Coach Staff and Senior engineers to run their own domains effectively and grow into broader technical leaders
Represent engineering in high-level technical discussions about roadmap priorities, architectural tradeoffs, and organizational investment decisions
Lead multi-team initiatives from concept to rollout, aligning multiple engineering groups around shared goals and compatible designs
Recognize systemic weaknesses, test fragility, performance gaps, security posture, developer experience—and design programs to address them at scale