Lead Developer, DevOps, Backend Developer

Job Family

Software Development & Support

Required:

Up to 10%

Public Trust Required – Ability to Obtain Public Trust

As a Lead Developer, you will provide technical leadership for teams supporting Grants.gov application operations, maintenance, enhancements, forms development, chatbot capabilities, system‑to‑system integrations, release planning, deployment, testing, documentation, and production support. You will work closely with federal stakeholders, architects, product owners, scrum masters, developers, testers, operations staff, security teams, IV&V partners, helpdesk partners, and modernization teams to design, build, troubleshoot, and deploy reliable, secure, scalable, and user‑centered solutions.

You will help ensure development activities align with HHS EPLC expectations, security and privacy requirements, application performance needs, and the operational continuity requirements of a public‑facing federal shared service.

• Lead application development, maintenance, and enhancement activities for Grants.gov, including web‑based capabilities, system‑to‑system interfaces, forms processing, chatbot‑related updates, and operational support features.
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership to developers by guiding solution design, coding standards, code reviews, troubleshooting, defect resolution, refactoring, and secure development practices.
• Design, develop, test, and deploy approved application enhancements in accordance with HHS Enterprise Performance Life Cycle expectations and program change management processes.
• Support corrective and preventive maintenance for the Grants.gov application and chatbot to sustain availability, performance, usability, and uninterrupted service through rolling deployment practices.
• Develop and maintain Grants.gov forms and related processing capabilities, including validation, browser compatibility, Section
  508 support, XML and PDF generation, and compatibility with current and prior form viewer versions.
• Support S2S technical coordination, including certificate coordination, diagnostics, error log review, interface troubleshooting, and issue resolution for partner organizations.
• Coordinate with operations, database, cloud, security, and application platform teams on deployments, configuration changes, performance tuning, monitoring, incident response, and production support needs.
• Support testing activities, including unit testing, integration testing, regression testing, defect triage, IV&V coordination, release readiness, and validation of production changes.
• Update and maintain technical documentation, development artifacts, system documentation, release notes, online help updates, troubleshooting guides, and other materials needed to operate and maintain the system.
• Analyze production issues, helpdesk escalations, stuck submissions, broken links, performance concerns, and application defects; recommend and implement timely fixes and long‑term improvements.
• Partner with architects and modernization teams to identify technical improvements, reduce technical debt, improve maintainability, support cost‑efficiency goals, and align legacy Grants.gov capabilities with future‑state modernization objectives.
• Communicate technical status, risks, design considerations, alternatives, and recommendations clearly to technical teams, federal stakeholders, and non‑technical audiences.

• Bachelor's degree; or the equivalent of four (4) years of experience in lieu of a degree.
• 8+ years of experience in software development, application maintenance, systems integration, or technology modernization, including experience leading development teams or work streams.
• Demonstrated experience designing, developing, testing, deploying, and maintaining enterprise applications in complex, mission‑critical environments.
• Experience supporting application operations and maintenance, defect resolution, release planning, deployment coordination, performance tuning, and production support.
• Experience developing or supporting web applications, APIs, system‑to‑system integrations, data exchanges, forms processing, workflow capabilities, or user management…