Technical Lead, Drupal

For People•Arlington, VA

1d•$130,000 - $160,000•Remote

About The Position

For People is improving government digital services for the disadvantaged population. We work directly with government agencies to modernize software, systems, and platforms so that they better serve people. Every month, hundreds of thousands of people go looking for facts about Medicare and Medicaid. They are researchers, reporters, policy staff, and health care providers. When the data is hard to find, a file is too large to post, or a column quietly changes its name between releases, their work slows down or goes wrong. This project supports the website where the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes that data for the public. It holds a large catalog of datasets, lookup tools, and dashboards from many parts of the agency, available as downloads, interactive tools, and a public API. As Technical Lead, you will be the top technical authority for the team that builds and runs it. You will keep the site fast, secure, and accessible, and you will lead the engineering behind its next stage, including larger data files, self-service publishing for the CMS offices that own the data, and bringing CMS data that is now spread across other agency websites onto one site. This position is a full-time position contingent on For People being awarded a federal contract. If awarded, this position’s expected start date is February 2027.

Requirements

A humble and caring attitude aligning with For People's values: passion, fun, curiosity, sustainability, humility, and respect
6+ years of Drupal development, including 3+ years on managed Drupal hosting such as Acquia, 3+ years building custom Drupal modules, and 3+ years with MySQL and SQLite databases
6+ years of web development overall, including 3+ years of React and 3+ years connecting React front ends to Drupal
Experience building and running software for the federal government, including work on CMS systems. You have kept a codebase in line with federal security requirements (FISMA) and you know how the CMS ATO process works.
Experience with content delivery networks (Akamai or similar) and cloud hosting, including planning and carrying out a move from one hosting environment to another
Experience owning a team's full testing practice, including functional, performance, security, and accessibility testing, and building websites that meet Section 508 requirements
Experience leading engineers on an agile team for a public-facing data or content platform, and working knowledge of open data standards
All work must be physically performed within the United States at all times.
Must be a United States citizen
Must be able to pass a government-performed public trust background check.

Responsibilities

Lead the engineering for the agency's public data website, built on Drupal with a separate React front end. You will own architecture decisions, keep Drupal and its modules current, and be responsible for your team’s coding standards.
Keep the site reliable and secure, with targets of 99.5% uptime. That covers release management, monitoring and alerts, incident response, and the security documentation that keeps the site's Authority to Operate (ATO) current.
Lead the research on new hosting and content delivery options. Lead out the migration to any new platform architectures without a gap in the site's ATO.
Give the CMS offices that own the data a way to publish and update it themselves in Drupal
Set the team's engineering standards, including code reviews, agentic coding tools, automated tests, security scans, and accessibility testing before every release.
Lead the technical work of moving data from other CMS websites onto the platform, and look for responsible uses of AI
Work closely with CMS product owners, data owners across the agency, other CMS contractors, and teammates from our partner firms, and explain technical trade-offs in plain language.