Principal Software Engineer – AI & Software Factory Engineering
Type of Requisition:
Regular
Clearance Level Must Currently Possess:
None
Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain:
Secret Public Trust/Other Required:
None
Job Family:
Software Engineering Job Qualifications:
Skills:
Containerization Software, GitLab CI/CD, Kubernetes Orchestration, Software Delivery Certifications:
None Experience:
8 + years of related experience US Citizenship Required:
Yes
Job Description:
Principal Software Engineer – AI & Software Factory Engineering
We're looking for a software engineer who likes building platform products — the tooling, automation, and AI capabilities other engineering teams build on top of. You'll write production code daily on a small, senior team delivering software factories, security automation, and AI-enabled development environments for Department of War and Federal customers. If your instinct when you see a manual process is to write code that eliminates it, this role is built for you.
MEANINGFUL WORK AND PERSONAL IMPACT
You'll work across multiple concurrent R&D and customer delivery efforts rather than a single narrow program, with the option to engage in proposals and customer demos if you want to build business acumen alongside technical depth
- Build agentic AI capabilities — tool orchestration, LLM application development, and workflow automation — using AI-assisted development daily
- Develop software that automates continuous Authority to Operate (cATO): evidence collection, compliance reporting, and policy-as-code enforcement
- Build secure-by-default CI/CD pipeline products — hardening templates, integrated security scanning (SAST, SCA, container, SBOM), and supply chain controls (signing, provenance, attestation) — that development teams across our portfolio consume
- Extend the platform with self-service capabilities: developer onboarding automation, reusable deployment patterns, and AI development tools (code assistants, model serving) — including for air-gapped environments
- Ship to and support production on hardened Kubernetes (Big Bang / Iron Bank) in CUI/IL5 environments — we run what we build
WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO SUCCEED
- Education: Bachelor's degree and 8+ years experience. In lieu of degree 12+ years of hands-on experience
- Experience: 5+ years of related experience in Software Engineering, DevOps / DevSecOps technologies; 3+ years of hands on experience with Kubernetes
- Strong development skills in Python, Go, or similar — you build tooling and applications, not just configure them
- Daily use of AI-powered development tools (code assistants, LLM-based tooling)
- CI/CD pipeline development — GitLab CI strongly preferred; Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or similar accepted
- Security scanning integration in automated pipelines (SAST, DAST, SCA, container scanning)
- Containerization (Docker, Helm, OCI artifacts) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and/or Ansible)
- Git-based workflows, GitOps deployment patterns, and solid Linux fundamentals
- Experience working in or deploying to classified or air-gapped environments
- Strong written and verbal communication; comfort juggling multiple projects with shifting priorities
-
Security clearance level : No clearance required to start with ability to obtain and mantain a Secret clearance
-
Location : Remote with travel up to 10%
-
Citizenship: US Citizenship
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Hands-on experience with agentic AI frameworks or LLM APIs (tool-use patterns, orchestration, RAG)
- Platform One / Big Bang, Iron Bank, or DoW-hardened Kubernetes distributions
- DoW security and authorization frameworks (NIST 800-53, RMF, cATO)
- Software supply chain security practices (Sigstore/Cosign, Syft, in-toto)
- AI/ML infrastructure in enterprise or air-gapped environments (model serving, GPU scheduling on K8s)
- Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certification
- Supporting proposals, RFI responses, or customer engagements as a technical SME
GDIT IS YOUR PLACE