Principal Platform Engineer

Who we are:

Raft (https://goraft.tech) is a customer-obsessed non-traditional small business with a purposeful focus on Distributed Data Systems, Platforms at Scale, and Complex Application Development, with headquarters in Reston, VA. Our range of clients include innovative federal and public agencies leveraging design thinking, cutting edge tech stack, and cloud native ecosystem. We build digital solutions that impact the lives of millions of Americans.

Our team is rapidly growing and looking for an experienced Principal Platform Engineer to lead development efforts and join our passionate team of high-impact problem solvers. We enjoy the challenges of human-centered design, security, and scale to create better outcomes for our federal agency partners. We are a remote-first and work completely in the open source.

What you will do: 

• Architect scalable and maintainable technical approach and ensure implementation of the approach  
• Actively develop public-facing digital solutions 
• Mentor software engineering team through pairing and performing code reviews  
• Work closely with the client and other key stakeholders to provide strategic input and help navigate needs and tradeoffs to build extensible digital solutions  

Who you are: 

• Should have exceptional experience building data intensive applications at scale
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and understand identity and authentication (Travis, Circle CI, etc)
• Solid experience in Kubernetes, Kafka, developing APIs, one solid command in a programming language
• Experienced building data intensive platforms and using open-source technologies
• Enjoy building digital solutions using user-centered philosophy instead of technology-based approach   
• Passion or writing code that is well unit tested
• Enjoy collaborating with Product Managers to plan story points, sprint themes, etc.
• Experience with at least one agile methodology, including Scrum or Kanban  
• Love to demo your work to the team 
• Obtain Security+ within the first 90 days of employment with Raft

Clearance Requirements:

• Ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance

Work Type: 

• Remote

What we will offer you:

• Highly competitive salary
• Fully covered healthcare, dental, and vision coverage + 401(k)
• Unlimited PTO + 11 paid holidays
• Education & training benefits
• Annual budget for your tech/gadgets needs
• Monthly box of yummy snacks to eat while doing meaningful work
• Remote, hybrid, and flexible work options
• Team off-site in fun places!
• Generous Referral Bonuses
• And More!

Our Vision Statement:  

We bridge the gap between humans and data through radical transparency and our obsession with the mission. 

Our Customer Obsession: 

We will approach every deliverable like it's a product. We will adopt a customer-obsessed mentality. As we grow, and our footprint becomes larger, teams and employees will treat each other not only as teammates but customers. We must live the customer-obsessed mindset, always. This will help us scale and it will translate to the interactions that our Rafters have with their clients and other product teams that they integrate with. Our culture will enable our success and set us apart from other companies.

How do we get there? 

Public-sector modernization is critical for us to live in a better world. We, at Raft, want to innovate and solve complex problems. And, if we are successful, our generation and the ones that follow us will live in a delightful, efficient, and accessible world where out-of-box thinking, and collaboration is a norm. 

Raft’s core philosophy is Ubuntu: I Am, Because We are. We support our “nadi” by elevating the other Rafters. We work as a hyper collaborative team where each team member brings a unique perspective, adding value that did not exist before. People make Raft special. We celebrate each other and our cognitive and cultural diversity. We are devoted to our practice of innovation and collaboration.