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Senior Principal Software Engineer / Team Lead

Herndon, VA

Clarity Innovations is a trusted national security partner, dedicated to safeguarding our nation’s interests and delivering innovative solutions that empower the Intelligence Community (IC) and Department of Defense (DoD) to transform data into actionable intelligence, ensuring mission success in an evolving world.

Our mission-first software and data engineering platform modernizes data operations, utilizing advanced workflows, CI/CD, and secure DevSecOps practices. We focus on challenges in Information Warfare, Cyber Operations, Operational Security, and Data Structuring, enabling end-to-end solutions that drive operational impact.

We are committed to delivering cutting-edge tools and capabilities that address the most complex national security challenges, empowering our partners to stay ahead of emerging threats and ensuring the success of their critical missions. At Clarity, we are people-focused and set on being a destination employer for top talent, offering an environment where innovation thrives, careers grow, and individuals are valued. Join us as we continue to lead innovation and tackle the most pressing challenges in national security.

Position Overview

The team lead partners with the program manager to ensure team members are empowered to do their best work building solutions for our customer.

The team lead enables their team to sustainably and efficiently make and implement the best possible technical decisions through experience, guidance, and mentorship. A good technical lead shapes their team with the right tools and attributes to deliver the best possible product for Clarity's customers.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership

  • Assess, maintain, and nurture a healthy team culture

  • Meet one-on-one with team members monthly at a minimum

  • Collaborate with each team member’s manager to provide effective mentorship and establish tailored development plans

  • Provide feedback on team members’ performance to managers

  • Work with program manager and talent acquisition team to ensure the team is staffed with appropriate technical talent 

  • Verify onboarding process is defined and followed for all new members

  • Ensure team members understand their roles and responsibilities

  • Apply team members’ technical strengths to corresponding work whenever possible

  • Establish and assess team members’ technical performance expectations

  • Promptly resolve performance issues in coordination with a team member’s manager

Technical Delivery

  • Keep the team on target; communicate priorities and ensure their tasking aligns with it

  • Implement Clarity’s engineering processes, standards, and quality expectations for your team, including tailoring and documenting deviations where appropriate

  • Review your team's code, provide feedback, and ensure technical excellence in delivery

  • Raise any issues impacting delivery, such as staffing, budget, or scope, to the PM

  • Ensure your team defines and adheres to design, development, versioning, release, and deployment workflows

  • Oversee your team’s documentation of design and architecture decisions

Product Ownership

  • Establish and communicate the "product" vision

  • Represent the team in external, technical engagements

  • Ensure the team’s backlog is well-documented, groomed, and prioritized

  • Provide time for team to work on enablers like maintenance tasks and automation for building, testing, and deploying

  • Deliver regular demonstrations of technical progress to customer

Growth

  • Identify opportunities for on-contract growth based on observed gaps in 

  • Act as a key contributor to proposals within or related to the program's scope and customer base

Qualifications

Team Leadership

  • Strong written and oral communication skills

  • Strong interpersonal skills to effectively engage with various stakeholders from customers to senior leadership

  • Experience providing formal and informal technical mentorship to teammates

Technical Delivery

  • Proficient with Kubernetes (K8s) deployment strategies, cluster lifecycle (deployment, troubleshooting, scaling), and container orchestration

  • Experience writing code in a general-purpose language such as Python or Go

  • Experience implementing modern DevOps practices and tools (e.g., CI/CD, IaC, GitOps) in production deployment workflows

  • Proficient in containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Podman)

  • Familiarity with Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) utilities (Crossplane, Backstage)

  • Experience architecting Kubernetes application deployments (using primitives such as, Pods, Services, Deployments, Namespaces, etc)

  • Experience deploying, managing, scaling Kubernetes workloads (e.g. Helm, Flux, Argo)

  • Experience configuring Kubernetes networking (e.g., Services, Ingress, NetworkPolicies)

  • Experience implementing or managing a Kubernetes Service Mesh (e.g., Istio, Linkerd)

  • Experience with Kubernetes cluster administration, including node management, upgrades, and troubleshooting

  • Proven experience architecting and managing production environments in major cloud providers like Azure, AWS, or GCP

  • Deep understanding of serverless compute (e.g., Azure Functions, AWS Lambda, or Google Cloud Functions) and managing distributed logic

  • Experience managing cloud object storage (Azure Blob, S3)

  • Extensive experience using Terraform to manage complex, multi-service environments, including writing reusable modules, managing state at scale, and implementing "infrastructure as code" best practices

  • Demonstrated ability to lead a team through the "refactor / replatform" phase of moving services from VMs to modern cloud-native architectures

Product Ownership

  • Experience translating customer requirements into actionable user stories/features

  • Experience breaking down large features into demonstrable and valuable milestones

  • Experience prioritizing and delegating tasks for at least one other team member

Growth

  • Experience contributing to technical proposals or similar products (e.g., technical white papers, rough order of magnitude estimates)

Preferred Qualifications

  • Current TOP SECRET security clearance with SCI eligibility and CI polygraph or higher

  • More than 10 years of industry experience in a software engineering or DevOps role

  • Experience communicating with customers and end-users

  • Experience delivering and managing capabilities in operational / production environments

  • Experience leading software design and architecture

  • Experience evaluating technologies and making informed decisions

  • Strong technical understanding of programming languages and tools in use

  • Strong understanding of at least one Agile methodology (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, SAFe)

Location and Clearance

This is a hybrid position with an expected 2-3 days onsite on an "as needed" basis with no minimum required time. Clarity Innovations strives to set consistent expectations and ensure a flexible and healthy work-life balance, but due to the position's nature and emergent customer needs, some weeks may exceed 2-3 days and others may require no onsite work.

This position is available in both Herndon, VA or Columbia, MD, and will require a counterintelligence polygraph within six months after hire. Candidates desiring to be based out of Fort Meade will require a counterintelligence polygraph prior to hiring.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

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