Principal Engineering lead

Unissant Inc. delivers innovative capabilities to the agencies that keep our nation healthy and safe. We apply our domain expertise data acumen and technology know-how to achieve breakthrough results for our clients. Working collaboratively we advance missions and careers through a focus on honesty integrity and dependability. We continuously look for talent excited to join that effort. To learn more about our exciting organization please visit us at .

We are seeking a Principal Engineering Lead to join our team and support our government client on a large multi-year IT services program.

The Principal Engineering Lead is accountable for engineering operations and standards; continuous integration continuous delivery and release governance; service-level objective and service-level indicator frameworks; operational readiness criteria; DevSecOps practices; and reliability across the delivery model. This role will work closely with government technical stakeholders program leadership architects product leaders data leaders cybersecurity teams cloud teams engineering teams and operations personnel to ensure solutions are engineered delivered released and operated securely reliably and in alignment with mission needs.

The ideal candidate is a strategic hands-on engineering leader with demonstrated experience serving in a Principal Engineer Engineering Director Chief Engineer or comparable senior engineering leadership role on a large federal IT services program. They bring deep technical expertise in software engineering cloud-native development DevSecOps CI/CD automated testing release management observability reliability engineering and engineering governance.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Lead the programs engineering operating model engineering standards development practices technical quality controls and continuous-improvement initiatives across delivery teams and work streams.
• Establish document communicate and govern engineering standards and practices for software development cloud-native services APIs integrations infrastructure as code automated testing code quality security deployment monitoring logging and operational support.
• Lead continuous integration continuous delivery and release governance processes to ensure releases are planned tested approved deployed monitored and supported in a controlled repeatable and secure manner.
• Define and maintain CI/CD pipeline standards deployment controls branching and versioning practices artifact management environment management automated security testing and release-readiness requirements.
• Establish and operate a service-level objective (SLO) and service-level indicator (SLI) framework that supports measurable reliability availability performance quality and user experience outcomes.
• Partner with product architecture cloud cybersecurity data and operations leaders to define appropriate reliability targets error budgets monitoring thresholds alerting practices incident response expectations and service-performance reporting.
• Define and enforce operational readiness criteria for new services enhancements platform changes and releases including security documentation monitoring logging alerting support procedures backup and recovery capacity performance accessibility and transition considerations.
• Promote and implement DevSecOps practices that integrate security quality compliance automation and operational concerns throughout the software delivery life cycle.
• Provide technical leadership and escalation support for complex engineering deployment performance reliability integration release and operational issues.
• Coordinate investigation and resolution of significant production incidents recurring defects reliability risks technical debt engineering bottlenecks and cross-team technical dependencies.
• Partner with architects and technical leads to ensure engineering implementation aligns with the approved reference architecture technical standards interoperability patterns security requirements and target-state roadmaps.
• Assess engineering maturity delivery performance code quality test automation deployment frequency lead time change-failure rate mean time to restore reliability trends and other engineering health indicators.
• Develop and maintain engineering governance artifacts including engineering standards playbooks CI/CD patterns release checklists operational-readiness checklists service catalogs SLO/SLI definitions reliability dashboards incident reviews and technical roadmaps.
• Ensure engineering practices and documentation support client oversight audit requirements security and compliance obligations program transition institutional knowledge retention and reuse.
• Mentor and guide engineering leads software engineers DevOps engineers site reliability engineers quality engineers and other technical personnel.
• Evaluate emerging engineering tools platform capabilities automation approaches and technical practices to improve delivery speed software quality security posture reliability developer experience cost efficiency and program sustainability.
• Communicate engineering performance release readiness reliability trends technical risks incident findings remediation plans and recommendations clearly to government and program leadership.
• Perform other duties as assigned in support of program priorities and client needs.

Work Experience and Job Skills

• Demonstrated experience serving as a Principal Engineering Lead Chief Engineer Engineering Director Engineering Manager Principal Software Engineer DevSecOps Lead or comparable senior engineering leadership role on a federal IT services program supporting 80 or more FTEs.
• Deep expertise in modern software engineering practices including cloud-native development microservices or service-oriented architecture API development distributed systems integration automated testing secure coding and performance engineering.
• Demonstrated experience establishing and operating engineering standards engineering governance quality practices technical review processes and delivery controls across multiple teams work streams vendors or stakeholder organizations.
• Experience designing implementing and governing CI/CD pipelines infrastructure as code automated testing code scanning security automation deployment controls artifact repositories and release-management practices.
• Experience leading release governance and operational-readiness processes for enterprise applications platforms data services cloud environments or integrated systems.
• Experience defining and managing SLOs SLIs error budgets service monitoring logging alerting incident response reliability reviews and service-performance reporting.
• Strong understanding of DevSecOps agile delivery cloud platforms containerization orchestration infrastructure automation observability site reliability engineering cybersecurity and operational support practices.
• Experience with source control CI/CD infrastructure automation testing monitoring and work-management tools such as GitHub GitLab Bitbucket Jenkins GitHub Actions GitLab CI Azure DevOps AWS DevOps tools Terraform Ansible Kubernetes Docker SonarQube Splunk Datadog Dynatrace Jira or comparable technologies.
• Experience partnering with cloud cybersecurity data analytics AI/ML product architecture and operations teams in a complex enterprise environment.
• Strong analytical problem-solving technical leadership incident-management conflict-resolution and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to work independently in a remote environment while effectively coordinating technical decisions and activities across distributed teams.
• Prior experience supporting government client programs in a comparable mission or technical domain is preferred.
• Experience supporting federal modernization cloud migration enterprise data digital services cybersecurity systems integration or large-scale technology transformation programs is preferred.
• Experience supporting AI/ML platform engineering model deployment MLOps data pipelines or AI-enabled services is preferred.
• Experience with AWS Microsoft Azure Google Cloud Platform or multiple major cloud service providers is preferred.

Education

• Bachelors Degree is required.
• Preferred fields of study include Computer Science Information Technology Information Systems Software Engineering Engineering Cybersecurity or a related technical field.
• MBA or Masters Degree in a relevant field of study is preferred.

Certificates Licenses and Registrations

• Relevant engineering cloud DevSecOps security and Agile certifications are preferred.

Communication Skills

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to present engineering standards release-readiness decisions reliability data technical risks incident findings remediation plans and performance information to stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Ability to communicate complex engineering DevSecOps and operational concepts clearly to executive leadership government clients program management delivery teams and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ability to write clear concise and well-organized engineering documentation technical standards playbooks release records incident reports dashboards and related content in a highly confidential manner.

Clearance Requirements

• US citizenship or eligibility to obtain a government PIV credential is required.
• Ability to successfully complete a federal background investigation and receive a federal suitability determination is required.
• Ability to obtain and maintain required client access credentials and any applicable clearance is required.
• Ability to satisfy E-Verify employment eligibility verification requirements is required.

Travel

• This position is primarily remote.
• The client may direct or approve occasional in-person participation for planning transition training meetings workshops or other program events.
• All reimbursable travel outside the local commuting area requires advance approval.

Environmental Requirements

• Mainly a routine office environment.
• May be required to lift up to ten (10) pounds.
• Must be flexible in working extended hours when required to support program priorities critical delivery milestones and client needs.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by the individual(s) assigned to this position. They are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties responsibilities and skills required. Unissant management reserves the right to modify add or remove duties and to assign other duties as addition where applicable and available reasonable accommodation(s) may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions of this position.

Please note: Candidate(s) will be required to go through pre-employment screening.

Unissant Inc. is a proud Equal Opportunity Employer! (EOE; M/F/Disability/Vets)

Required Experience:

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