Software Architect – AI-Enabled Enterprise Platform

Agile Defense • McLean, VA

4d • Remote

About The Position

Agile Defense is seeking a hands-on Software Architect to own the architecture and technical direction of Workforce, an AI-enabled enterprise application platform focused on secure, user-centered workflows, enterprise integrations, and cloud-native delivery. Workforce is built as a set of containerized microservices deployed to Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) in Azure Government Community Cloud (GCC), combining modern web application development, API-driven services, AI-assisted capabilities, and secure deployment practices. The Software Architect is the senior technical owner of the platform. This person sets architectural direction, leads the engineering team’s technical execution, serves as Release Manager for the platform’s multi-service release train, and partners with the Product Manager to turn roadmap priorities into executable plans. This is a hands-on role: the Software Architect is expected to stay close to the code, regularly designing, implementing, reviewing, and debugging software alongside the team.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience building and maintaining production applications.
• 5+ years designing and owning production application architecture, including leading technical execution for an engineering team as a software architect, technical lead, or senior technical owner.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret security clearance.
• Strong hands-on coding ability in at least one object-oriented, strongly typed language such as Java, C#, TypeScript, Go, or Kotlin.
• Professional experience building both modern web front-end applications and backend web APIs, services, and integration layers.
• Demonstrated ownership of production application architecture across front-end, backend, data, and integration concerns.
• Experience planning and delivering work for a team, including breaking complex requirements into milestones and tasks and managing dependencies.
• Experience with structured release practices for distributed or multi-service systems, including versioning, change control, release coordination, and rollback.
• Strong understanding of API design, authentication and authorization patterns, data modeling, error handling, testing, and maintainability.
• Practical understanding of secure software development, including access control, data protection, dependency hygiene, and production readiness.
• Working knowledge of AI-first application patterns: tool calling, system instruction design, context management and retrieval grounding, and integrating LLM capabilities into a broader application architecture.
• Ability to onboard into a large, complex codebase quickly and become the technical authority with limited handoff.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical tradeoffs, risk, and status to engineers, product stakeholders, and executive leadership.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with TypeScript, Node.js, and React.
• Experience with microservices, containerized applications, Kubernetes (AKS preferred), Helm, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience delivering in Azure Government, Azure GCC, or other compliance-constrained cloud environments.
• Experience with LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, LlamaIndex, OpenAI/Azure OpenAI APIs, or similar frameworks.
• Experience serving as Release Manager or participating in a formal Change Control Board.
• Experience integrating with Microsoft 365, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, or similar enterprise collaboration platforms.
• Experience with OIDC/OAuth2, Keycloak, Entra ID, or other identity providers.
• Experience designing applications that handle sensitive data, enterprise permissions, auditability, or compliance requirements.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps practices, APM and observability tooling, autoscaling, and production support.
• Experience with AI-enabled document workflows, search and summarization, workflow automation, or agentic application patterns.
• Experience on SaaS, enterprise, government, or secure internal platforms.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture, technical direction, and engineering standards for the Workforce platform and its microservices.
• Define and document service boundaries, API contracts, data flows, integration patterns, and key technical decisions, including the tradeoffs behind them.
• Lead the design of the platform’s AI-enabled architecture, including tool calling, system instructions, context management, prompt and control flow design, and integration with LLM-based services.
• Design secure enterprise integrations, including identity, document workflows, collaboration tools, and external platform APIs.
• Identify and manage technical debt, platform risk, and architectural drift, making pragmatic decisions about when to refactor and when to ship.
• Lead technical execution for the Workforce engineering team, including solution design, task breakdown, estimation, sequencing, and code review.
• Partner with the Product Manager to translate product goals, user workflows, and requirements into technical designs, milestones, and well-scoped engineering work.
• Establish and uphold standards for code quality, automated testing, documentation, and definition of done.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, pairing, code reviews, and direct technical feedback.
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for engineering leadership, product, and customer stakeholders on status, risk, and technical tradeoffs.
• Serve as Release Manager for the platform’s multi-service release train, coordinating release readiness, release notes, and release records.
• Represent the team in change control and release review processes, presenting changes, risk, and rollback plans for approval.
• Own production posture for the platform, including rollback decisions, incident triage, root cause follow-through, and post-release verification.
• Collaborate with platform and DevOps engineers on CI/CD pipelines, Helm-based deployments to AKS, observability, autoscaling, and performance testing.
• Contribute directly to the codebase, including feature implementation, critical-path work, integration work, and production fixes.
• Build and maintain full stack capabilities across modern web front ends and backend web APIs.

Benefits

• Employees of Agile Defense are our number one priority, and the importance we place on our culture here is fundamental.
• Our culture is alive and evolving, but it always stays true to its roots.
• Here, you are valued as a family member, and we believe that we can accomplish great things together.
• Agile Defense has been highly successful in the past few years due to our employees and the culture we create together.
• We call it the 6Hs, the values that define our culture and guide everything we do.
• Together, these values infuse vibrancy, integrity, and a tireless work ethic into advancing the most national security and critical civilian missions.
• It's how we show up every day.
• It's who we are.

What This Job Offers

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