Principal Software Engineer; TS​/SCI w​/CI Poly; S

Principal Software Engineer (TS/SCI w/ CI Poly) – ARKA Group, LP

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This senior role is for a Software Architect/Principal Software Engineer, requiring technical leadership, system design, and implementation oversight of complex government system architectures for national critical systems. You will serve as the key decision-maker in defining the “how” a system will be implemented, coordinating efforts between ARKA and sub‑contractors. The responsibilities will evolve over the program, fostering customer intimacy to understand needs and leading the engineering team to realize the critical vision.

We seek an architect who is customer mission‑focused, passionate about strategic technical leadership in software architecture and design of complex government systems, and has experience leading programs of 30+ developers in a distributed environment. Responsibilities include creating robust system designs, developing evolving architectures for enterprise‑level solutions, establishing interface standards, leading advanced design tasks, driving technical consensus, mitigating risks, acting as the primary technical interface to leadership, government customers, and subcontractors, and mentoring the distributed engineering team.

We offer generous relocation benefits, a flexible schedule, and opportunities for personal skill development.

• Lead and mentor engineering development teams across the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to ensure program and technical success.
• Drive Continuous Delivery and Dev Ops Adoption:
  Emphasize modern practices like CI/CD, infrastructure as code, and automated testing to ensure rapid and reliable program success.
• Define Cloud‑Native/Distributed System Architecture:
  Establish resilient patterns (microservices, event‑driven) and scale solutions for distributed systems.
• Govern Engineering Quality and Resilience:
  Evaluate design, development practices, automated pipelines, and operational monitoring for performance, scalability, and resilience.
• Proactively communicate engineering status, architectural risks, technical debt, and operational issues (security, availability) to leadership and the customer.
• Facilitate Architectural Alignment with Customers:
  Conduct technical exchange meetings (TEMs) with government customers to present roadmaps, secure design approvals, and ensure continuous alignment.
• Champion Innovation and Technology Strategy:
  Evaluate, prototype, and recommend emerging technologies (AI/ML, new languages, cloud services) to enhance performance, security, and future capabilities.

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related technical field.
• 10+ years of professional software development experience.
• Experience as a Chief Architect, Associate Chief Architect, or equivalent technical leadership role, guiding teams through the full SDLC and deploying into classified government environments.
• Strong cross‑functional communication skills and proven ability to collaborate within fast‑paced teams, managing multiple tasks to meet milestones.
• Proven track record of leading Agile initiatives across design, development, integration, testing, and delivery.
• Experience in large‑scale system design and deployments on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) with architectural principles for scalability.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes, VM management, object storage, and serverless functions.
• Ability to translate system engineering analysis into actionable development concepts.
• Experience with code review processes ensuring technical soundness, coding standards, and testing.
• Experience with geographically distributed teams.
• Excellent interpersonal skills for engaging virtual teams.
• Active TS/SCI U.S. Government Security Clearance with CI Poly.

• Strong business acumen aligning technical solutions with business objectives.
• Experience developing software on AWS or Azure with a solid understanding of cloud‑native architectures.
• Familiarity with container…