Software Engineer SWE (Clearance Required)

Location: Fort Meade, MD Clearance Required: Top Secret/SCI with Active Full Scope Polygraph We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer (Level 3) to support a mission-critical program within the Intelligence Community at Fort Meade, MD. This is an on-site SCIF position requiring a TS/SCI clearance with an active Full Scope Polygraph prior to consideration. The SWE Level 3 is a senior engineer capable of designing, implementing, and improving distributed application orchestration logic across a Kubernetes-native platform in a classified environment. This role carries architectural authority and mentorship responsibility: the successful candidate will lead the development of reusable Helm charts, GitOps templates, and deployment strategies; contribute to platform-wide architecture decisions; and guide junior engineers through design decisions and tradeoffs. Key Responsibilities: Distributed Application Orchestration and Kubernetes Platform Design scalable workflows for deploying and managing Kubernetes-native applications including multi-tenant and multi-cluster configurations Lead development of reusable Helm charts, GitOps templates, and deployment strategies Build system-aware controllers or agents that automate application lifecycle tasks Contribute to platform-wide architecture decisions including deployment strategy, multi-cluster config, and observability Event-Dr [... source excerpt omitted ...] patterns, or equivalent technologies Build and maintain custom Kubernetes controllers and operators using Go or Python Ensure event-driven systems meet reliability and security requirements for classified operations Infrastructure Automation and DevOps Implement infrastructure-as-code using Terraform, cloud-init, Ansible, or equivalent tooling Support GitOps pipeline design using ArgoCD, Fleet, or equivalent Collaborate with DevOps and platform teams to ensure secure, compliant deployments Contribute to CI/CD pipeline design and code review standards Leadership and Mentorship Mentor junior and mid-level engineers; conduct code reviews for reliability and security Guide the [... source excerpt omitted ...] ram security policies Balance automation and operator oversight in classified environments Support secure secrets management and certificate lifecycle integration in Kubernetes Qualifications: Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field. Equivalent experience may be substituted. Experience: 8+ years of software engineering experience, with majority in cloud-native, Kubernetes-based, or distributed systems contexts. Additional Required Qualifications: Active TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Polygraph - must be active prior to start Deep experience coding in Go and/or Python in cloud-native contexts Strong Kubernetes expertise: CRDs,