Developer Lead

Job Title: Developer Experience Lead
Location: Washington, DC (Remote)
Type: Contract
Compensation: $97.00/hr on W2
Security Clearance: Public Trust

• Act as the senior technical advisor to application teams that build and maintain custom software, helping them adopt the platform's source control, CI/CD, testing, dependency management, and security tooling.
• Study how teams build, test, and release software; find friction and bottlenecks; and recommend and drive improvements that speed delivery without weakening security, accessibility, or operational requirements.
• Turn enterprise standards and policies into clear, usable guidance, and bring teams' feedback and pain points back to platform and governance leadership.
• Build shared templates, starter repositories, example pipelines, and reusable components (golden paths) that let teams start new work quickly and consistently.
• Partner with platform, security, and operations engineers so developer workflows stay aligned with architecture, cybersecurity, and privacy requirements.
• Guide teams on adopting AI-assisted development tools safely and productively.
• Own the developer documentation and onboarding experience: best practices, coding standards, how-to guides, and onboarding paths.
• Run workshops, office hours, tech talks, and individual coaching to drive adoption of approved tools and practices.
• Define and track developer experience metrics (e.g., onboarding time, lead time, self-service rate, developer satisfaction) and use them to set priorities.
• Lead technical support and incident response for development teams, including hands-on Tier 2-3 troubleshooting when needed.
• Provide backup coverage for the pipeline engineering lead, software packaging, and the user experience designer.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related field and 12+ years of relevant experience, or a Master's degree in one of these fields and 10+ years of relevant experience.
• 5+ years in software engineering, Dev Ops, or platform engineering roles, including hands‑on work within the last 2 years with an enterprise source control and CI/CD platform (e.g., Git Hub, Git Lab, Azure Dev Ops, or Jenkins) and automated testing.
• 3+ years of UX engineering, UX design, or interaction design experience; this may include designing developer‑facing products such as internal developer portals, self‑service platform workflows, developer tools, or documentation sites.
• Experience leading adoption of shared tools or practices across multiple development teams, such as golden‑path templates, an internal developer platform or portal, inner‑source libraries, or an engineering onboarding program.
• Experience creating technical documentation and training, and delivering workshops, briefings, and mentoring for engineers.
• Experience in complex coordination across multiple project or product teams, including briefing senior technical and non‑technical leaders.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust determination at the high‑risk level; fingerprinting and a credit check are required before starting work.
• Ability to report on‑site in the Washington, DC metro area with one business day's notice.
• Within the last 18 months, built golden paths on Git Hub Enterprise: reusable Git Hub Actions workflows, repository templates, and docs‑as‑code sites (e.g., Git Hub Pages).
• Built or ran an internal developer portal or service catalog (e.g., Backstage) or a self‑service platform workflow.
• Helped developers act on security findings from Git Hub Advanced Security, Sonar Qube, JFrog Xray, or similar tools without slowing delivery.
• Defined and reported developer experience and delivery metrics (e.g., DORA, SPACE, onboarding time,…