Software Engineer SWE; Clearance Required

Software Engineer SWE (Clearance Required)

Location: Fort Meade, MD

Clearance Required: Top Secret/SCI with Active Full Scope Polygraph

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer (Level
3) to support a mission‑critical program within the Intelligence Community at Fort Meade, MD. This is an on‑site SCIF position requiring a TS/SCI clearance with an active Full Scope Polygraph prior to consideration.

The SWE Level 3 is a senior engineer capable of designing, implementing, and improving distributed application orchestration logic across a Kubernetes‑native platform in a classified environment. This role carries architectural authority and mentorship responsibility: the successful candidate will lead the development of reusable Helm charts, Git Ops templates, and deployment strategies; contribute to platform‑wide architecture decisions; and guide junior engineers through design decisions and tradeoffs.

• Design scalable workflows for deploying and managing Kubernetes‑native applications including multi‑tenant and multi‑cluster configurations.
• Lead development of reusable Helm charts, Git Ops templates, and deployment strategies.
• Build system‑aware controllers or agents that automate application lifecycle tasks.
• Contribute to platform‑wide architecture decisions including deployment strategy, multi‑cluster config, and observability.

• Design and implement event‑driven architectures using Kafka, controller patterns, or equivalent technologies.
• Build and maintain custom Kubernetes controllers and operators using Go or Python.
• Ensure event‑driven systems meet reliability and security requirements for classified operations.

• Implement infrastructure‑as‑code using Terraform, cloud‑init, Ansible, or equivalent tooling.
• Collaborate with Dev Ops and platform teams to ensure secure, compliant deployments.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipeline design and code review standards.

• Mentor junior and mid‑level engineers; conduct code reviews for reliability and security.
• Guide the team through design decisions and engineering tradeoffs.
• Help shape internal standards, shared tooling, and reusable component frameworks.
• Think in systems, not just services: evaluate cross‑cutting concerns in all designs.

• Ensure containerized deployments adhere to DISA STIGs and program security policies.
• Balance automation and operator oversight in classified environments.
• Support secure secrets management and certificate lifecycle integration in Kubernetes.

Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field. Equivalent experience may be substituted.

Experience: 8+ years of software engineering experience, with majority in cloud‑native, Kubernetes‑based, or distributed systems contexts.

• Active TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Polygraph – must be active prior to start.
• Deep experience coding in Go and/or Python in cloud‑native contexts.
• Experience with event‑driven or agent‑based systems (Kafka, controller patterns).
• Familiarity with infrastructure automation (Terraform, Ansible).
• Demonstrated end‑to‑end system component delivery ownership.
• Proven mentorship and technical leadership capability.
• Comfortable balancing automation with operator oversight in classified environments.

• Type Script for frontend or tooling development.
• Open Shift or Rancher Government Solutions in air‑gapped deployments.
• Service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd).
• Observability tooling:
  Prometheus, Grafana, Open Telemetry.
• Cross‑domain solution (CDS) experience.
• DoD 8140 IASAE Level II or III…