Senior Software Developer (Must be eligible for security clearance)

About the role

We're looking for a versatile Senior Software Developer to design, build, and deliver mission-critical software for a government customer in the U.S. Intelligence Community. This is a wear-multiple-hats role for an engineer who is comfortable across the whole stack — someone who can set the architectural direction for a system and then chase a problem through it all the way down to the kernel.

Responsibilities

• Architect full end-to-end software systems and services — defining structure, interfaces, technology choices, and making thoughtful trade-offs based on mission needs and technical constraints.
• Research, design, develop, and modify enterprise software throughout the full software development lifecycle.
• Create architecture diagrams, design documents, and technical patterns that guide other engineers and support long-term scalability and maintainability.
• Write production-grade software primarily in Go and Rust, plus shell/Bash for automation and supporting tools.
• Develop automated tests to ensure ongoing reliability.
• Contribute to front-end development in TypeScript and React when needed.
• Use AI-assisted and agentic coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) as part of daily development — analyzing codebases, troubleshooting production systems, and accelerating problem-solving — while applying good judgment about when human review is required.
• Packaging, building, and deploying containerized applications in modern orchestrated, GitOps-driven environments.
• Planning, managing, and monitoring deployments, owning the reliability of the software you ship.
• Building internal tools, CLIs, and APIs that streamline development, build, and deployment workflows.
• Working across the entire stack — application code, container runtime, OS, and kernel — to diagnose issues and deliver solutions within distributed, mission-critical systems.

Requirements

The Software Developer Sr Principal must have:

• Education: Technical training, certifications, or a relevant degree.
• Experience: 8+ years of professional software development experience.
• Required technical skills: – Systems-level programming in Go and/or Rust – Strong Linux and shell/Bash skills, including understanding at the kernel level – Experience designing and architecting software/systems – Building secure, highly available distributed systems – Containerized software development (e.g., Docker/OCI) – Writing automated tests and using CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code – Hands-on experience with AI-assisted or agentic coding tools

Qualifications

Security clearance: Ability to obtain TS/SCI with Poly (We will sponsor the selected candidate if you do not already have the required clearance)

Citizenship: US citizenship required

Role requirements: – Ability to architect systems and make thoughtful technical trade-offs – Strong debugging skills in complex, distributed environments – Comfortable working across the full stack, including OS and kernel internals – Skilled at troubleshooting, hardening, and improving system reliability – Able to work independently with limited supervision – Strong communication skills – Willingness to adopt and integrate AI tools into daily engineering workflows

Skills

Preferred skills: – Kubernetes (highly desired) and GitOps-based delivery (Flux, Argo CD) – Systems-level experience with C or C++ – TypeScript/React UI development – Container tooling (Docker Compose) – Renovate – Monitoring, alerting, and debugging large-scale distributed systems – Building tools and APIs – Open-source contribution or maintenance

Benefits

At GDIT, we offer comprehensive benefits and wellness packages, including 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. 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 also provide a variety of paid time off plans, including vacation, sick and personal time, holidays, paid parental, military, bereavement and jury duty leave. We regularly review our Total Rewards package to ensure our offerings are competitive and reflect what our employees have told us they value most.

Pay

The likely salary range for this position is $161,500 - $218,500. 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.

Schedule

Scheduled Weekly Hours: 40

Travel Required: Less than 10%

Telecommuting Options: Onsite Work Location: USA MD Annapolis Junction