Staff Engineer

U.S. citizenship required; all work must be performed within the continental United States.

Raft is a customer‑obsessed, non‑traditional defense‑tech company headquartered in McLean, VA, delivering AI/ML and data solutions to U.S. military and government agencies. The firm focuses on autonomous data fusion, distributed data systems, platforms at scale, and complex application development.

About the Role

As a Staff DevSecOps Engineer you will spearhead initiatives related to developing and implementing end‑to‑end cluster and application lifecycles, setting the benchmark for security and efficiency. Raft is building a real‑time data platform for the Department of Defense, aggregating sensor data and presenting it via a mission‑planning UI. Key technologies include Kafka, Kafka Streams, Pinot, Java, Scala, and Kubernetes. The role involves hands‑on collaboration with a high‑impact team.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, DevSecOps, platform engineering, or a related field.
• Strong grasp of software engineering fundamentals and the full SDLC, including building, testing, debugging, and maintaining production software and distributed systems.
• Hands‑on experience with Kubernetes and Docker, including Helm charts and networking (Calico, Cilium).
• Experience running stateful, data‑intensive services and distributed data platforms (Kafka, Pinot, Flink) in containerized environments.
• Experience with AWS or other cloud platforms and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible).
• Experience building CI/CD pipelines with GitLab and GitLab Runners, plus GitOps‑based delivery.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Fluent Bit, Kibana, Loki).
• Strong troubleshooting, communication, and collaboration skills across software, systems, cybersecurity, platform, and test teams.
• U.S. citizenship and an existing Active Top Secret clearance.
• Ability to work onsite in a secure environment and willingness to travel to customer locations for integration, testing, and deployment activities.
• Ability to obtain CompTIA Security+ within the first 90 days of employment.

Highly Preferred

• Proficiency in Python, Go, Java, Scala, or similar languages.
• Experience with streaming and data tools (Kafka Streams, Apache Pinot, Apache Flink).
• Experience with REST APIs, WebSockets, and integrating multiple data formats, protocols, systems, or sensor sources.
• Experience writing automated tests for backend and distributed applications.
• Experience with package and dependency managers (Maven, Gradle, NPM, Yarn).
• Experience automating infrastructure and operations with Python or Go.
• Experience building security scanning and compliance checks into CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience integrating software components, subsystems, COTS, and FOSS.
• Experience on Agile/Scrum teams and supporting formal integration and testing events.
• Experience working with government customers or external engineering teams, including presenting technical status and documentation.

Pay

Salary range: $150,000 – $210,000 per year.

Schedule

On‑site work at the customer site in Dulles, VA, with up to 25 % travel.

Benefits

• Fully covered healthcare, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) with company match.
• Flexible PTO (“Take as you need”) plus 11 paid holidays.
• Annual education and training budget, including a budget for tech/gadgets.
• Monthly snack box.
• Remote, hybrid, and flexible work options.
• Team off‑site events.
• Generous referral bonuses.