Senior Staff Software Engineer

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.

What you’ll do

• Engineer a software product as part of a cross-functional team, which includes user experience researchers and designers, product managers, engineers, and other functional specialists

• Achieve technical excellence by advocating for and adhering to lean-agile engineering principles and practices such as API-first design, simple design, continuous integration, version control, and automated testing

• Select and use the right tools, frameworks, languages, and technologies for the job, with a preference for open-source solutions

• Analyze systems to identify technical debt, instability, unreliability, and other opportunities for improvement, then design, document, and communicate solutions

Basic qualifications

• Write clean, working, and reusable code, backed by automated tests

• Build secure, compliant software and defend against common vulnerabilities

• Understand the fundamentals of data engineering, including how to use different datastores to handle persistent data in software systems

• Understand how the pieces of a software system fit together, and design with performance, reliability, and availability in mind

• Put users at the center of your work, thinking through the impact and implications of the code you write

• Work directly with stakeholders to understand their needs, explain technical tradeoffs in plain language, and shape what gets built.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience building accessible software that meets Section 508 and WCAG standards

• Experience working in constrained or regulated environments, such as legacy systems, ATO boundaries, or FedRAMP-authorized cloud services

• Experience with infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform) and/or immutable infrastructure (e.g., Docker)

• Experience contributing to open-source projects or building software in the open

Other requirements

• You must be a U.S. Citizen to be eligible for employment

• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories

• As a government contractor, you may be required to obtain a public trust or security clearance, up to Top Secret

• You will be required to complete a company background check successfully.

• Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute

• Ability to travel, as needed

Location

This is a fully remote position.

Salary

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:

• Senior Software Engineer: $150,000–$185,000

• Staff Software Engineer: $170,000–$203,000

• Principal Software Engineer: $180,000–$230,000

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

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.