Backend Software Engineer Lead

IvoryCloud seeks an experienced Backend Software Engineer Lead to anchor the organization’s federal enterprise backend. The role governs architectural decisions, API design, and microservices, guiding dual track sprint delivery across NIPR and SIPR environments. A background in government-facing systems and active security clearances is required.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead for backend engineering on the program, owning architecture, API design, microservices, and data-access patterns.
• Lead the backend development team, providing technical mentorship, code review leadership, and architectural guidance throughout the sprint cycle.
• Develop high volume, highly available REST APIs to support complex transactional workflows, including contract-first OpenAPI/Swagger specifications, backward-compatible semantic versioning, and consumer-driven contract testing integrated into CI/CD.
• Deliberately architect microservice boundaries to enable independent deployability, fault isolation, and team autonomy while avoiding distributed monolith patterns common in large federal systems.
• Implement service-to-service security at the application layer with mutual TLS, OAuth 2.0 plus JWT, rate limiting, and service mesh policy alignment with platform controls.
• Collaborate with the Data Engineer to build the data-access layer that supports financial reporting feed completeness and aids audit remediation for transaction and case data.
• Incorporate data completeness validation into application logic so missing required fields are surfaced for correction rather than persisted, making completeness an engineered property of the platform.
• Maintain requirements traceability from approved user stories through acceptance criteria, test cases, and delivered functionality to support audit evidence requirements.
• Apply TDD and BDD practices across the backend, driving increased automated test coverage with emphasis on security-sensitive code.
• Manage dual-track sprint discipline by balancing maintenance work with new feature development, reserving an audit-remediation lane within the feature backlog.
• Coordinate releases across NIPR and SIPR environments, ensuring NIPR validation before cross-domain promotion and timely deployment on the SIPR side within the defined window.
• Enforce classification-aware data handling, including data labeling, DLP integration, and provenance logging, ensuring classification is embedded in the application.
• Maintain integration points with external federal systems using contract-first APIs and feature-toggle decoupling to avoid external timelines blocking internal delivery.
• Partner with QA to build test automation, embed quality gates in CI/CD, and facilitate user acceptance testing prior to production releases.
• Lead architectural and code reviews on every backend pull request and ensure production changes receive documented technical and security sign-off.
• Prepare release notes, deployment runbooks, and rollback procedures for each production release, coordinating with Release Management and Platform/DevSecOps for blue-green deployments.
• Contribute to program reporting by delivering technical delivery metrics, code quality indicators, and reliability data for government leadership.
• Maintain a continuously refreshed backend engineering risk register documenting technical debt, architecture risk, scalability constraints, and security findings with assigned owners and dashboards.
• Uphold adherence to established CMMI Level 3 DEV and SVC appraised processes for requirements management, configuration management, verification and validation, decision analysis, and quality assurance.
• Represent backend capabilities in technical interchange meetings, architecture review boards, change control sessions, and cross-agency groups, offering engineering feasibility insights to leadership.
• Mentor and develop backend engineers and frontend developers on backend integration concerns, supporting recruiting, onboarding, and professional growth of the broader team.
• Explore and evaluate emerging backend practices, microservices patterns, API governance frameworks, and AI-assisted tooling, recommending pragmatic adoption when it clearly accelerates delivery or improves audit evidence.

Requirements

• U.S. Citizenship: Required, non-negotiable.
• Clearance: Active Secret clearance required.
• Experience: Minimum 10 years of backend software engineering on enterprise applications, including at least 5 years serving U.S. federal customers and 3 years in a technical lead, senior engineer, or architect role on enterprise-scale mission systems.
• Location: Arlington, Virginia / National Capital Region; hybrid schedule with on-site presence at DSCA Headquarters (Arlington, VA) and IvoryCloud Headquarters (Rockville, MD). Must reside within commuting distance of the NCR and be able to report on-site within three hours of request.
• Technical proficiency: Expert in Java, Python, or .NET (C#); working proficiency in a second stack strongly preferred.
• Architecture and API experience: Microservices architectures, REST API design (OpenAPI/Swagger), contract-first integration, and relational/analytical data stores at federal scale.
• Communication: Excellent oral and written communication, with ability to brief technical leadership and government teams on architectural decisions and trade-offs.
• Quality practices: Demonstrated TDD and BDD discipline, with requirements traceability and automated coverage on security-sensitive code.
• Cross-domain experience: Direct experience sustaining applications across both NIPR and SIPR, including data handling and cross-domain release coordination.

Technologies

Java, Python, .NET (C#); OpenAPI / Swagger; OAuth 2.0; JWT; mutual TLS

Salary

USD 145,000 - 175,000 per year

Benefits

• Salaried position with eligibility for company and Business Development bonus programs
• 401(k) plan with matching
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Referral program
• Retirement plan
• Vision insurance
• Flexible schedule

Certifications

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Developer Associate (AZ-204)
• AWS Certified Developer - Associate
• CompTIA Security+
• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
• Java Developer
• Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) or equivalent (within six months of hire)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience operating backend applications within a CMMI Level 3 or higher appraised Agile organization across both NIPR and SIPR environments
• Direct experience with defense security cooperation, Foreign Military Sales, or comparable mission domains and their enterprise systems
• Experience engineering high-volume federal financial or transactional systems at significant throughput
• Experience integrating backend apps with DoD data ecosystems, cross-domain solutions, or similar classified environments such as DoD Advana, eMASS, or Bifrost CDS
• Track record of backend work cited in audit findings, performance improvements, or technical debt reduction on federal program reviews