Principal Engineering Lead
 Raft | |
paid holidays, 401(k)
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 United States, D.C., Washington | |
 Feb 23, 2026 | |
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This is a U.S. based position. All of the programs we support require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment. All work must be conducted within the continental U.S. Who we are: Raft (https://TeamRaft.com) is a customer-obsessed non-traditional defense tech company dedicated to empowering U.S. military and government agencies with cutting-edge AI/ML and data solutions. We are a leader in autonomous data fusion and Agentic AI, with a purposeful focus on Distributed Data Systems, Platforms at Scale, and Complex Application Development. With headquarters in McLean, VA, our range of clients includes innovative federal and public agencies leveraging design thinking, cutting-edge tech stack, and cloud-native ecosystem. We build digital solutions that impact the lives of millions of Americans. We'relooking for an experienced Principal Engineering Leadto support our Intelligence Community customer(s) and join our passionate team of high-impact problem solvers. This is a unique opportunity to lead a cross-functional engineering team,architectmission-critical solutions, and serve as the primary technical face of Raft to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Leveraging your lessons learned from being in the trenches,you'llshape how software applications and data platforms are researched, architected, built, and deployed at scale-while providingexpertiseon design patterns, tooling choices, and AI/ML strategy across multiple teams. About the role: As a Principal Engineering Lead,you'lluse your experience to guide a cross-functional engineering team on a path toenterprisedeploymentswithin the Intelligence Community.You'llknow where the pitfalls are and provide future-proof plans and mitigation strategies to your engineers.You'llserve as the primary technical point of contact for NRO stakeholders-leading customer-facing demonstrations, presenting architectural strategies to senior leaders, and translating mission requirements into executable technical plans. You are equally comfortable in front of a customer as you are writing code, designing microservices, standing up data pipelines, and deploying AI/ML models in classified environments.You'llbe hands-on in writing plugins, applications, webhooks, and modules that help more than one team in an enterprise environment. You will mentor and grow engineers across distributed locations, drive agile practices, and champion cloud-native best practices. What we are looking for:
Highly preferred:
Clearance Requirements:
Work Type:
What we will offer you:
Our Vision Statement: We bridge the gap between humans and data through radical transparency and our obsession withthemission. Our Customer Obsession: We will approach every deliverable like it's a product. We will adopt a customer-obsessed mentality. As we grow, and our footprint becomes larger, teams and employees will treat each other not only as teammates but customers. We must live the customer-obsessed mindset, always. This will help us scale and it will translate to the interactions that our Rafters have with their clients and other product teams that they integrate with. Our culture will enable our success and set us apart from other companies. How do we get there? Public-sector modernization is critical for us to live in a better world. We, at Raft, want to innovate and solve complex problems. And, if we are successful, our generation and the ones that follow us will live in a delightful, efficient, and accessible world where out-of-box thinking,and collaboration is a norm. Raft's core philosophy isUbuntu: IAm, BecauseWe are. We support our"nadi"by elevating the other Rafters. We work as a hyper collaborative team where each team member brings a unique perspective, adding value that did not exist before. People make Raft special. We celebrate each other and our cognitive and cultural diversity. We are devoted to our practice of innovation and collaboration. We'rean equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin,veteranor disability status. We're an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status. | |