Principal Software Engineer

Type of Requisition:
Regular

Clearance Level Must Currently Possess:
None

Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain:
None

Public Trust/Other Required:
Other

Job Family:
Software Engineering

Job Qualifications:

Skills:
Problem Solving, Software Solutions, Solutions Development
Certifications:
None
Experience:
5 + years of related experience
ship Required:
Yes

Job Description:

PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPER SENIOR

What You'll Do

Define and drive the strategic direction for backend and full-stack engineering practices, architecture, and technical excellence across the organization

Lead the development of scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems that serve government customers

Serve as the technical authority and thought leader for system architecture, data design, and engineering excellence

Design and implement modern service architectures, data pipelines, and infrastructure patterns that enable team velocity and system reliability

Deliver new features and improvements to our core services including major read/write paths for customer intake, application screening, and information dissemination

Collaborate with product managers and stakeholders to balance technical feasibility with business requirements, making pragmatic trade-offs that deliver measurable impact

Build and maintain shared libraries, service frameworks, and infrastructure patterns that enable consistency and reduce cognitive load

Identify opportunities to modernize our backend systems and take ownership of large-scale technical initiatives that improve system quality, performance, and maintainability

Establish and champion engineering best practices including API design, data modeling, testing strategies, observability patterns, security standards, and code quality

Mentor and coach engineers at all levels on backend technologies, distributed systems, and establish career development pathways for backend specialization

Influence technical decisions across teams and serve as a strategic advisor on architecture and infrastructure initiatives

Work across the full stack when needed to solve problems end-to-end - frontend and infrastructure experience is valuable but backend systems are your

primary focus

What We're Looking For Evidence of Engineering Accomplishment

Demonstrated track record of leading and delivering multiple production-ready, scalable distributed systems with measurable business impact

Proven experience architecting and implementing microservice architectures at scale with highthroughput and reliability requirements

Track record of establishing backend engineering standards, practices, and architectural patterns that improve team productivity and system quality

Working experience with distributed system patterns including event-driven architectures, asynchronous processing, caching strategies, and data consistency patterns

Experience designing and implementing APIs (REST, GraphQL, or similar) that serve as the foundation for customer-facing applications

Strong understanding of system transformation patterns with practical experience leading modernization efforts from monoliths to microservices or legacy to modern stacks

Experience with observability, monitoring, and alerting strategies including structured logging, metrics, tracing, and incident response

Familiarity with cloud-native architectures, infrastructure as code, and deployment patterns (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform)

Experience with data architecture including relational and NoSQL databases, data modeling, migration strategies, and data governance

Technical Excellence

Strong proficiency in modern programming languages (Java, Python, or similar) with deep understanding of language ecosystems and tooling

Solid understanding of distributed systems principles including consistency models, consensus algorithms, failure modes, and reliability patterns

Working knowledge of cloud engineering paradigms, asynchronous systems, service integration patterns, and event-driven architectures

Experience with automated testing strategies including unit testing, integration testing, contract testing, and end-to-end system testing

Practical knowledge of system performance optimization, capacity planning, and cost optimization

Understanding of security principles including authentication, authorization, encryption, secrets management, and secure coding practices

Experience establishing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines with automated testing, security scanning, and deployment strategies

Familiarity with container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS), infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation), and DevOps practices

System Design & Architecture

Demonstrated ability to design systems that balance consistency, availability, partition tolerance, performance, and cost

Strong understanding of data architecture including database selection, schema design, indexing strategies, and query optimization

Experience with message brokers, event streaming platforms (Kafka, SQS, EventBridge), and asynchronous processing patterns

Ability to design for reliability including graceful degradation, circuit breakers, retry strategies, and disaster recovery

Working knowledge of API design principles, versioning strategies, and backward compatibility patterns

Understanding of system observability including structured logging, distributed tracing, metrics aggregation, and alerting strategies

Leadership, Ownership, & Communication

Demonstrated ability to lead large-scale technical initiatives from vision to production, influencing outcomes across multiple teams

Quality driven, sets the standard for excellence in communication, code, and documentation

Ability to communicate complex technical concepts and strategic vision clearly to engineers, product managers, executives, and external stakeholders

Proven track record of mentoring and developing engineers at all levels, building organizational backend engineering capability

Recognized advocate for sound engineering practices who establishes patterns and influences engineering culture

Comfort leading cross-functional initiatives, making architectural decisions with organizational impact, and navigating technical/business trade-offs at the principal level


#EDopportunities

The likely salary range for this position is $142,792 - $189,750. This is not, however, a guarantee of compensation or salary. Rather, salary will be set based on experience, geographic location and possibly contractual requirements and could fall outside of this range.

Scheduled Weekly Hours:
40

Travel Required:
Less than 10%

Telecommuting Options:
Remote

Work Location:
Any Location / Remote

Additional Work Locations:

Total Rewards at GDIT:
Our benefits package for all US-based employees includes a variety of medical plan options, some with Health Savings Accounts, dental plan options, a vision plan, and a 401(k) plan offering the ability to contribute both pre and post-tax dollars up to the IRS annual limits and receive a company match. To encourage work/life balance, GDIT offers employees full flex work weeks where possible and a variety of paid time off plans, including vacation, sick and personal time, holidays, paid parental, military, bereavement and jury duty leave. GDIT typically provides new employees with 15 days of paid leave per calendar year to be used for vacations, personal business, and illness and an additional 10 paid holidays per year. Paid leave and paid holidays are prorated based on the employee's date of hire. The GDIT Paid Family Leave program provides a total of up to 160 hours of paid leave in a rolling 12 month period for eligible employees. To ensure our employees are able to protect their income, other offerings such as short and long-term disability benefits, life, accidental death and dismemberment, personal accident, critical illness and business travel and accident insurance are provided or available. We regularly review our Total Rewards package to ensure our offerings are competitive and reflect what our employees have told us they value most.

Our Identity Verification Process:
As part of the hiring process, we will ask you to complete an identity verification process that leverages advanced biometrics and artificial intelligence to ensure authenticity and protect against identity fraud. You are expected to be on camera during virtual interviews. We reserve the right to take your picture to verify your identity and prevent fraud. By proceeding, you authorize the collection, processing, and use of your biometric data for identity verification and security purposes.

About Our Work:
We are GDIT. A global technology and professional services company that delivers consulting, technology and mission services to every major agency across the U.S. government, defense and intelligence community. Our 26,000 experts extract the power of technology to create immediate value and deliver solutions at the edge of innovation. We operate across 50 countries worldwide, offering leading capabilities in digital modernization, AI/ML, Cloud, Cyber and application development. Together with our clients, we strive to create a safer, smarter world by harnessing the power of deep expertise and advanced technology.

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Equal Opportunity Employer / Individuals with Disabilities / Protected Veterans