Staff Software Engineer - Data Platform - Kubernetes - Distributed Systems - Federal
About The Position
As a Staff Software Engineer with the Data Platform organization, you will be responsible for designing and implementing features and services within our cloud-native platform. You will design, build, and operate components and services within the cloud-native platform, taking features from design through to production. You will lead well-scoped projects within your team, turning requirements and rough ideas into solid technical designs and delivering them. You will collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align your work with the platform’s architecture and standards. You will contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of what you build — writing tests and instrumentation, improving runbooks, and participating in on-call. You will spend most of your time hands-on building — operators, controllers, automation, and platform services that other teams depend on. You will help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.
Requirements
- Experience leveraging or critically thinking about how to integrate AI into engineering work — whether using AI-powered coding and operational tooling, automating workflows, or reasoning about how AI changes the way software and infrastructure are built.
- 8+ years of software development experience with a Bachelor's degree; OR 5+ years with a Master's degree; OR 3+ years with a PhD; OR equivalent work experience.
- 5+ years of hands-on experience building, deploying and operating workloads on Kubernetes.
- Working experience with at least one major hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, GCP), including its core compute, networking, and IAM primitives.
- A track record of delivering complex features or services as a key contributor.
- Solid working knowledge of containers, CI/CD and GitOps-based delivery, and infrastructure-as-code.
- Strong programming skills in Go (or another systems language with a willingness to work primarily in Go).
Nice To Haves
- Experience building Kubernetes controllers or working with the operator pattern.
- Familiarity with container networking (CNI) or service mesh.
- Experience with workload identity, mTLS, or secrets management.
- Experience with observability — metrics, tracing, and dashboards.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate components and services within the cloud-native platform, taking features from design through to production.
- Lead well-scoped projects within your team, turning requirements and rough ideas into solid technical designs and delivering them.
- Collaborate with senior, staff, and principal engineers to align your work with the platform’s architecture and standards.
- Contribute to the reliability, scalability, and operability of what you build — writing tests and instrumentation, improving runbooks, and participating in on-call.
- Spend most of your time hands-on building — operators, controllers, automation, and platform services that other teams depend on.
- Help onboard and mentor junior engineers through code review, design feedback, and pairing.
Benefits
- health plans
- flexible spending accounts
- a 401(k) Plan with company match
- ESPP
- matching donations
- a flexible time away plan
- family leave programs
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
