Staff / Principal Software Engineer, Lead (HHS)

Staff / Principal Software Engineer, Lead (HHS)

United States

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists. The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, lead software engineers combine hands-on development with technical leadership to guide strategy and delivery. They raise the engineering bar while ensuring systems are secure, resilient, and scalable.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is launching one of the most ambitious transformations in government — and this is a rare chance to be part of it. You’ll join a high-impact team of product managers, researchers, designers, engineers, and security experts working side-by-side with HHS leadership to modernize the systems people rely on to access healthcare, strengthen cybersecurity that protects personal data, launch digital services used by tens of millions every day, and integrate data and AI responsibly into daily work across the department so teams at every level can make smarter, safer decisions.

As a lead software engineer on this project, you’ll provide direction while staying hands-on, designing and building services with an emphasis on reliability, security, and simplicity. You’ll help standardize engineering practices, improve observability, and embed security and compliance into delivery from the start. You’ll prepare federal teams to sustain these improvements by sharing knowledge and practices that last — from training and enablement to reusable tools like templates, playbooks, and decision records.

What you’ll do

• Lead technical direction for one or more products and platforms, from discovery through production operations
• Design and build services with an emphasis on reliability, security, and iterative releases
• Apply modern delivery practices — including continuous integration and delivery (CI / CD), trunk-based development, code review, and automated testing
• Standardize environments with infrastructure as code (IaC) and policy as code for secure, repeatable delivery
• Improve observability and service health with metrics, logs, and traces, guided by service level objectives (SLOs)
• Embed security and compliance from day one, supporting evidence automation and continuous Authority to Operate (ATO) practices
• Mentor engineers, facilitate technical design reviews, and model pragmatic, high-quality engineering practices
• Help federal teams sustain improvements by delivering training and enablement, and by leaving behind reusable resources such as templates, playbooks, and decision records

What we're looking for

Nice-to-have qualifications

Other requirements

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a remote-friendly role. You can be based anywhere in the U.S. Candidates in the Washington, DC area, or those willing to travel there periodically for in-person collaboration, are especially encouraged to apply.

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Software Engineer at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows :

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways :

Interview tips

We want you to have a great interview experience with us! Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview :

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.

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