Principal Software 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.

We’re looking for an experienced Principal Software Engineer to support our customer and join our passionate team of high-impact problem solvers. This is a unique opportunity to shape how mission-impact software applications are researched, architected, built, managed, and deployed at a massive DoD scale. Leveraging your lessons learned from being in the trenches, you’ll have a chance to work with several software teams to provide expertise on design patterns, refactoring decisions, as well as providing expertise in choosing the right tools for the right job at enterprise scale. 

About the role:

As a Principal Software Engineer, you’ll use your experience to guide more than one software team on a path to production at a massive scale. You’ll know where the pitfalls are and provide future-proof plans and mitigation strategies to other engineers. You’ll also be hands-on in writing plugins, applications, webhooks, and modules that help more than 1 team in an enterprise environment. 

What we are looking for:

• 6+ years of building applications at scale in various languages with a JVM based language being at least one of them
• Experience with design patterns and architectural decisions records (ADRs)
• Ability to design abstract modules, interfaces, classes, concepts that can be leveraged and customized by multiple software teams
• Experience in building event streaming applications using Kafka, Pulsar, or Red Panda
• Experience in recommending tooling choices to multiple teams based on their requirements
• Ability to explain highly complex technical details in plain language
• Deep understanding of CI/CD pipelines using various tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, etc.
• Experienced in building applications that follow 12 factor app principals and/or the reactive manifesto
• Experienced in deploying applications to Cloud Foundry and/or Kubernetes

Highly preferred:

• Active Secret or TS/SCI clearance
• Track record of speaking at public facing conferences about software engineering principals
• Having a knowledge radar of modern software trends and knowing their pros and cons
• More than one war story of running into issues while building large scale software applications

Clearance Requirements:

• Ability to obtain and maintain a minimum of a Secret clearance

Work Type:

• Remote

What we will offer you:  

• Highly competitive salary 
• Fully covered healthcare, dental, and vision coverage 
• 401(k) and company match 
• 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 
• 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.

We’re an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.