Senior Principal Software Engineer

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 Tech Lead partners with the Program Manager and Chief Engineer to ensure the following outcomes:

• Their team members are empowered to do their best work.
• Their team builds the best solutions for the customer

 

The Tech Lead’s job is not to be the smartest person in the room or the best engineer on their Capability Development, Integration, and Operational Support (CDIOS) team.  Rather, the role is to help their team make the best possible technical decisions and implement them in a sustainable and efficient way.  A good Tech Lead builds a team with the tools and attributes to deliver the best possible product for Clarity's customers.

 

This program focuses on designing, implementing, and fielding a Provisioning and Procurement (P2) system which conducts infrastructure provider curation, enables planning, and automatically instantiates pathways as dictated by the plans. The P2 system then cleanly decommissions infrastructure pathways upon request.  After development and fielding of acceptable MVP for the DoD customers, the program will then expand product functionality with additional agents and approaches to both data transport and signature reduction techniques. The program will also integrate an infrastructure overwatch system designed to evaluate infrastructure health using commercial and government data sets as well as analytics on infrastructure internal data logs.

 

This position requires a TS/SCI clearance and will require on-site presence at both Clarity and the government customer locations.

 

As CDIOS Tech Lead, you will play a critical role in empowering cyber mission operators with state-of-the-art tools and infrastructure to drive mission success.  This is an opportunity to work at the intersection of cutting-edge technology, security, and operational excellence, shaping the future of Offensive Cyberspace Operations (OCO) and Computer Network Operations (CNO) development and execution.

 

If you are passionate about optimizing developer workflows, reducing friction in secure software development, and enabling elite cyber operators, we encourage you to apply and be part of our mission-driven team.

Key Responsibilities

1.  Team Leadership

1. 1. Assess, maintain, and nurture a healthy team culture
   2. Meet one-on-one with your team members monthly at a minimum
   3. Collaborate with each team member’s manager to provide effective mentorship and establish tailored development plans
   4. Provide feedback on your team members’ performance to their managers
   5. Ensure the following:

• • • Your team is staffed with the appropriate technical talent
    • Talent Acquisition hires new team members that meet your team’s technical requirements
    • Your team defines and follows an onboarding process for all new team members
    • Your team members understand their roles and responsibilities
    • Team members have opportunities to use their technical strengths whenever possible
    • Team members meet your expectations for technical performance, and that any issues are resolved promptly in coordination with the team member’s manager

2. Technical Delivery

1. 1. Keep the team on target; communicate priorities and ensure their tasking aligns with it
   2. Implement Clarity’s engineering processes, standards, and quality expectations for your team, including tailoring and documenting deviations where appropriate
   3. Review your team's code
   4. Write enough code to maintain awareness of your team’s developer experience
   5. Raise any issues impacting delivery, such as staffing, budget, or scope, to the PM
   6. Ensure your team does the following:

• • • Defines and follows a design workflow
    • Documents its design and architecture decisions
    • Defines and follows a development workflow
    • Defines and follows a versioning, release, and deployment workflow

3.  Product Ownership

1. 1. Establish and communicate the "product" vision
   2. Represent the team in external, technical engagements
   3. Ensure the following:

• • • All stories in the team’s backlog are well-documented, groomed, and prioritized
    • Your team has time set aside to work on enablers such as maintenance tasks and automation (e.g., for building, testing, and deploying)
    • Your customer receives regular demonstrations of technical progress

4.  Growth

1. 1. Identify opportunities for on-contract growth based on observed gaps in partnership with the SMA/PMA/CMA
   2. Act as a key contributor to proposals within or related to the program's scope and customer base

Required Qualifications

• Team Leadership
  • Strong communication skills, both written and oral
  • Strong interpersonal skills to effectively engage with various stakeholders (customers, PMs, team members, and senior leadership)
  • Experience providing technical mentorship, formal or informal, to other team members
• Technical Delivery
  • 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)
• Technical Expertise
  • Experience with Kubernetes cluster lifecycle (deployment, troubleshooting, scaling)
  • Experience with container orchestration using Kubernetes (K8s)
  • Experience in containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Podman)
  • Experience with Infrastructure as Code Utilities (e.g., Crossplane, Pulumi, Terraform)
  • Experience in Linux-based development environments (e.g., Ubuntu, RedHat Enterprise Linux, or derivatives)
  • Experience developing and troubleshooting Internet-disconnected systems
  • Experience writing Automated Tests (e.g., unit tests, acceptance tests, system/integration tests)
  • Experience troubleshooting network connectivity issues
  • Experience with a version control code repository, such as GitLab
  • Experience with Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) software
  • Experience with implementing and managing the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• 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 efforts (e.g., technical white papers, rough order of magnitude (ROM) estimates)
• This position requires a TS/SCI clearance

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing and fielding managed attribution networks, platforms, and tools, or executing operations employing these systems, is highly desired.
• Experience developing offensive cyber operations platforms and systems communicating and passing data between multi-level security domains and enclaves is highly desired.

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.