Senior Principal Platform Engineer (K8s SME / Tech Lead)

Position Overview

The technical lead partners with the program manager to ensure team members are empowered to do their best work building solutions for our customer.

Rather than being the smartest person in the room or the team’s best engineer, the technical lead enables their team to sustainably and efficiently make and implement the best possible technical decisions. A good technical lead shapes their team with the right tools and attributes to deliver the best possible product for Clarity's customers.

Key Responsibilities

Team Leadership

• Assess, maintain, and nurture a healthy team culture

• Meet one-on-one with team members monthly at a minimum

• Collaborate with each team member’s manager to provide effective mentorship and establish tailored development plans

• Provide feedback on team members’ performance to managers

• Work with talent acquisition to ensure the team is staffed with appropriate technical talent 

• Verify onboarding process is defined and followed for all new members

• Ensure team members understand their roles and responsibilities

• Apply team members’ technical strengths to corresponding work whenever possible

• Establish and assess team members’ technical performance expectations

• Promptly resolve performance issues in coordination with a team member’s manager

Technical Delivery

• Keep the team on target; communicate priorities and ensure their tasking aligns with it

• Implement Clarity’s engineering processes, standards, and quality expectations for your team, including tailoring and documenting deviations where appropriate

• Review your team's code

• Write enough code to maintain awareness of your team’s developer experience

• Raise any issues impacting delivery, such as staffing, budget, or scope, to the PM

• Ensure your team defines and adheres to design, development, versioning, release, and deployment workflows

• Oversee your team’s documentation of design and architecture decisions

Product Ownership

• Establish and communicate the "product" vision

• Represent the team in external, technical engagements

• Ensure the team’s backlog is well-documented, groomed, and prioritized

• Provide time for team to work on enablers like maintenance tasks and automation for building, testing, and deploying

• Deliver regular demonstrations of technical progress to customer

Growth

• Identify opportunities for on-contract growth based on observed gaps in 

• Act as a key contributor to proposals within or related to the program's scope and customer base

Preferred Qualifications

• Current TOP SECRET security clearance with SCI eligibility and CI polygraph or higher

• More than 10 years of industry experience in a platform engineering or DevOps role.  Experience with either in the cyber operations domain is a bonus.

• Experience communicating with customers and end-users

• Experience delivering and managing capabilities in operational / production environments

• Experience leading software design and architecture

• Experience evaluating technologies and making informed decisions

• Strong technical understanding of programming languages and tools in use

• Strong understanding of at least one Agile methodology (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, SAFe)

Location and Clearance

This is a hybrid position with an expected 2-3 days onsite on an "as needed" basis with no minimum required time. Clarity Innovations strives to set consistent expectations and ensure a flexible and healthy work-life balance, but due to the position's nature and emergent customer needs, some weeks may exceed 2-3 days and others may require no onsite work.

This position is available in both Herndon, VA or Columbia, MD, and will require a counterintelligence polygraph within six months after hire. Candidates desiring to be based out of Fort Meade will require a counterintelligence polygraph prior to hiring.