Code for America believes government can work for the people, by the people, in the new digital age, and that government at all levels can and should work well for all people. For more than a decade, we’ve worked to show that with the mindful use of technology, we can break down barriers, meet community needs, and find real solutions.

Our employees build and transform government and community tools and services, making them so good they inspire change. We merge the best parts of technology, nonprofit, and government to help support the people who need it most.

With a focus on transparency and fairness, and deep empathy for partners in government and community organizations and the people that our partners serve, we’re building a movement of motivated change agents driven by meaningful results and lasting impact.

At Code for America, you contribute to exciting work while learning and developing in a supportive and flexible environment. Our compensation and benefits are holistic and thoughtfully curated to represent our employees and our mission. Help us drive real generational change that lasts.

Code for America is looking for a talented Principal Software Engineer who will lead on organization-wide technical efforts and strengthen our software engineering teams.

About the Role: 

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will:

• Take on technical responsibilities with enthusiasm and deliver with high outputs and excellence
• Define and give share to technical problems and their solutions when there is ambiguity.
• Gain a deep understanding of organization-wide needs and the context of the complex systems we work in.
• Positively influence cross-discipline colleagues across the organization and enable better decision-making.
• Be involved in all stages of our products’ lifecycle: Research, design, prototyping, developing applications, tools, services, or specialized utility programs that integrate with government systems at scale.
  
  

This role will report to a Director of Engineering and is expected to travel no more than 10% of the time. 

Code for America is based in California and can employ those who reside full-time within the United States. This is a remote position.

In this Position You Will:

• Specialty Engineering:
• Support and strengthen infrastructure security across the organization
• Deploy, configure, and manage firewalls to protect systems and data
• Conduct regular testing and assessments of infrastructure security
• Identify vulnerabilities and recommend remediation strategies
• Guide teams on security best practices and ensure compliance with standards
• Collaborate cross-functionally to embed security into engineering workflows
• Product Engineering:
• Work with ambiguity, enjoying simplifying complex product specifications into nonfunctional design and technical strategies
• Guide cross-portfolio architecture decisions and technical specifications that persuasively articulate a technical approach
• Develop software with high output, high quality and high stability to maintain our uptime SLA
• Gain a deep understanding of organization-wide portfolio needs and simplify them into cohesive technical systems that can be leveraged by other portfolio solutions
• Strategic Leadership:
• Develop technical strategies and guide technical architecture decisions across multiple workstreams and teams; and for the entire organization
• Prototype to show what’s possible
• Mentorship & Coaching:
• Break down and estimate work for more junior engineers and positively influence cross-functional partners across the organization
• Contribute to the training and mentorship of junior software engineers
• Other duties as assigned

About You:

• 10 years of experience with an OOP language like Java, Python or Ruby, with a preference for Ruby on Rails experience and/or passion.
• 10 years of experience with Cloud computing platforms such as AWS or GCP, or 2 years of experience with Aptible.
• Understanding of computer science and web fundamentals, from data structures to APIs
• Eager in collaborating with others, provide technical and professional mentorship to others
• Possess excellent written and verbal communication skills
• 8 years developing and deploying with Github, CICD pipelines with Circle.ci or Jenkins. 
• 8 or more years working in Agile Software Development model, XP, or TDD
• Experience optimizing performance, investigating, troubleshooting and fixing customer issues as a full-stack engineer. 
• Experience working with PII, creating secure systems, and handling security incidents and improvements
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-architected code 
• Write concise documentation

This specific Principal Software Engineer should have specialized expertise in: 

• Strong background in cloud infrastructure security with focus on access control, network segmentation, and data protection in large-scale environments
• Experience deploying and managing firewalls, intrusion detection, and monitoring systems in cloud and hybrid architectures
• Expertise in identity and secrets management, ensuring least-privilege access and secure handling of credentials
• Proficiency in encryption strategies, including securing data at rest and in transit, and guiding teams on compliance with regulatory frameworks (SOC 2, HIPAA, NIST, etc.)
• Hands-on DevOps and automation skills using Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g., Terraform/OpenTofu, CloudFormation) to embed security into pipelines and deployments
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipeline hardening and integrating security scanning tools to identify vulnerabilities early in the development lifecycle
  Practical experience with incident response and remediation, leveraging automation and monitoring to minimize risk
  Ability to translate security requirements into actionable engineering tasks and partner with DevOps/Engineering teams to implement best practices

It’s a Bonus if You Have:

• Led a team as a tech/engineering lead or engineering manager
• Familiarity with pair programming and test driven development
• Experience with Separation of Concerns, Service Oriented, and Component based  Architecture
• Experience with making government services better for people who need them most
• Experience with the justice system, social safety net, or other mission relevant experience
• Familiarity with AI, GAI, Data Factory, Software Connector Strategies

What You’ll Get

Salary: 

Code for America’s salary bands are transparent as a part of our commitment to transparency and fairness. As part of our hiring practices, we aim to target the midpoint of the 2nd quartile of the range for all new hires.

Offer targets vary based on market / geographic location. The offer targets for this role range from $143,884 to $176,138, annually.

Benefits and Perks: 

• Values:
• Leadership and teammates who share a strong work ethic and values, and who respect and care for one another
• A collaborative, cross-functional, hardworking, and joyful environment
• Employee Enablement Support: 
• Laptop provided
• $700 remote environment setup; $200 stipend and up to $500 reimbursement, in accordance with our equipment policy
• Cell phone and/or internet reimbursement of $50 per month 
• Professional Development:
• $1000 annual (per calendar year) stipend towards professional development; prorated at time of hire
• Up to $1000 of professional development funds can be rolled over each year, up to a maximum of $2000
• Retirement & 401k Plans:
• Employees under 3 years are eligible for a 100% employer match of up to 3% of employee contribution
• Employees with 3+ years are eligible for an additional 50% employer contribution over 3%, to a maximum of 5%
• Medical:
• Full benefits package with options up to 100% coverage toward select medical, dental, and vision plans
• Employer contributes up to 80% of the cost towards dependent and family coverage
• Remote Work:
• Code for America employees may work remotely across the US
• Code for America employees main residence must be within the US
• Full-time employees work 40 hours per week, Monday - Friday
• Collaborative working hours: we aim to hold all internal meetings between 10 AM - 3 PM PT. We expect all Code for America staff to be available during these set working hours
• Time Off: 
• Open personal time off, a minimum of 16 paid holidays, and an org-wide closure from Christmas Day through New Year's Day
• Paid sick time; up to 96 hours annually
• Competitive paid parental and family leave
• 4 weeks of paid sabbatical after 4 years of service, with an option of up to 4 additional weeks of unpaid time away

Equal Employment Opportunity: 

Code for America is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will not be discriminated against because of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, citizenship status, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws.

Code for America Workers United:

This position is not covered by a Collective Bargaining Agreement between Code for America and Code for America Workers United, affiliated with OPEIU, Local 1010. The agreement was ratified on October 27, 2023, and is currently in effect.

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