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Staff/Principal Software Engineer, Lead (HHS)

United States

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists. The work we do matters.

About the job

As a Lead Software Engineer at Skylight, you’ll combine hands-on engineering with technical leadership to turn strategy into running systems. You’ll work on high-impact modernization at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), partnering with product, design, security, data, and platform teammates. You’ll set clear technical direction, raise the engineering bar, and ship secure, resilient services that scale. You’ll also enable federal partners by sharing practices, patterns, and tooling so they can sustain and evolve the work over time.

What you’ll do

  • Lead technical direction for one or more products and platforms, from discovery through production operations
  • Design and build services with an emphasis on reliability, security, and simplicity — favoring small, iterative releases
  • Apply modern delivery practices — continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), trunk-based development, code review, automated testing
  • Standardize environments with infrastructure as code (IaC) and policy as code to create secure, repeatable delivery
  • Improve observability and service health with metrics, logs, and traces, and guide work with service level objectives (SLOs)
  • Embed security and compliance from day one — integrate controls into pipelines and support continuous Authority to Operate (ATO) evidence
  • Mentor engineers, facilitate technical design reviews, and model pragmatic, high-quality engineering practices
  • Align stakeholders on tradeoffs, risks, and scope, and make progress visible with clear goals and outcomes
  • Document decisions, patterns, and runbooks, and coach government teams so improvements stick

What we're looking for

Minimum qualifications

  • Track record leading engineering for complex, production systems and delivering measurable outcomes
  • Strong hands-on skills building services and APIs in a modern language and runtime, with clean, reliable, reusable code
  • Experience with modern delivery — continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), automated testing, code review, operating services in cloud environments
  • Proficiency with infrastructure as code (IaC) and environment automation
  • Solid understanding of secure software practices and integrating compliance into delivery
  • Working knowledge of data persistence and patterns for building resilient, observable services
  • Commitment to capacity building — mentoring, documenting, and transferring knowledge so teams continue improving over time
  • Ability to communicate clearly with executives and cross-functional teams in a professional services environment
  • Passion for creating better public outcomes through great government services
  • A mindset and work approach that align with Skylight’s core values

Nice-to-have qualifications

  • Experience with containers and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) or platform engineering
  • Background in cloud and application modernization, integrations, or shared services at enterprise scale
  • Exposure to compliance and security environments such as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), or Authority to Operate (ATO) processes
  • Experience guiding cost, performance, and reliability tradeoffs across multiple teams
  • Prior experience in civic tech, government, or other highly regulated environments
  • Experience working effectively on hybrid or distributed teams
  • Ability to spend time on-site at HHS in Washington, DC — either by being based locally or by traveling periodically for in-person collaboration

Don’t meet 100% of the criteria but think you can do the job? We’d love to chat anyway! We’re on a mission to build diverse teams, and studies have shown that women and marginalized folks are less likely to apply to jobs if they don’t check every box.

Other requirements

  • All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. Some federal contracts require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment.
  • You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship.
  • As a government contractor, you may be required to obtain a public trust or security clearance.
  • You may be required to complete a company background check successfully.
  • Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a remote-friendly role. You can be based anywhere in the U.S. Candidates in the Washington, DC area, or those willing to travel there periodically for in-person collaboration, are especially encouraged to apply.

Care package

Salary

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Software Engineer at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

  • Associate Software Engineer: $90,000–$125,000
  • Software Engineer I: $120,000–$140,000
  • Software Engineer II: $135,000–$160,000
  • Senior Software Engineer: $150,000–$185,000
  • Staff Software Engineer: $170,000–$203,000
  • Principal Software Engineer: $180,000–$230,000

Benefits

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways:

  • Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance
  • Short-term and long-term disability insurance
  • Life and AD&D insurance
  • Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
  • Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
  • Flexible paid time-off-policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays
  • Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents
  • Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options
  • Business development / sales bonuses
  • Referral bonuses
  • Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development
  • Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases
  • Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)
  • Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year
  • Flexible, remote-friendly work environment
  • An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good

Interview tips

We want you to have a great interview experience with us! Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview:

  • Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works.
  • Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them.
  • If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at recruiting@skylight.digital.

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.

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