Senior Software Engineer

We’re looking for a Software Engineer to help scale and productionize applications within our federal solutions portfolio. You will work alongside AI engineers and software developers solving mission-centric problems across a variety of customer environments, from commercial cloud to AWS GovCloud to fully disconnected networks.
Your specific focus will be on making our applications performant, scalable, secure, and durable. You will also assist with getting them through the accreditation gauntlet that stands between working software and software the mission can use in real-world environments.
The Impact
At Seekr, we move fast and value flexible thinkers who embrace a growth mindset. Federal work rewards a specific kind of adaptability: requirements get tweaked in real time, the deployment target changes, user feedback loops run through environments you cannot access directly, and the security posture you designed against gets a new control overlay two weeks before delivery.
Engineers who can absorb that churn without losing the thread will make an immediate impact here. You will have direct influence over how our federal solutions are built, deployed, and accredited, and your decisions will hold up for years across multiple programs.
Duties and Responsibilities
Work closely with AI engineers to ship high-quality, production-ready features
Own the path from functional prototype to stable, scalable, accredited service
Drive sound technical decision-making and help establish and enforce engineering best practices across the federal engineering team
Design and build systems that satisfy security controls as a first-class requirement rather than a post-hoc remediation exercise
Build and maintain hardened container images, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment artifacts for both cloud and restricted/air-gapped environments
Debug and perform root cause analysis on production issues in environments with limited observability and access
Collaborate with Product to scope and decompose requirements into actionable engineering work
Mentor engineers on the federal team through code review, design review, and pairing
Required Qualifications
3+ (Senior) / 5+ (Staff) / 10+ (Principal) years of professional software engineering experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems
Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience
Demonstrated ownership of production systems you personally designed, debugged, and/or operated
Hands-on depth and applied experience in:
Python (async patterns, packaging, dependency management)
PostgreSQL or a comparable RDBMS
RESTful API design (FastAPI preferred)
Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, Helm)
Distributed systems (particular emphasis on fundamentals: idempotency, retries, eventual consistency, queueing, failure isolation, graceful degradation, etc.)
CI/CD (GitLab CI preferred)
Automated testing (unit, integration, E2E)
Observability (structured logging, performance metrics, tracing)
Strong written and verbal communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences
What We’re Looking for in Practice
You have opinions about your own past architecture decisions (particularly ones that turned out badly)
You can debug a system you did not build in an environment you cannot reproduce locally using logs and a stack trace
You use AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and similar) as accelerants and do not offload critical thinking to said assistants; you review, test, and take ownership of every line of code that ships regardless of how it was produced
You have shipped AI-backed features (LLM inference, agents, retrieval), understand where they are appropriate and where they are not, and have the judgement to reach for the simplest solution that solves the problem at hand
The Seekr salary determination process takes into account a number of factors, including but not limited to geographic location, Federal Government contract labor categories, relevant prior work experience, specific skills, education, and certifications. Seekr offers a competitive mix of compensation, learning and development opportunities, and benefits. Key components of our benefits package include health insurance, unlimited PTO, paid leave, and retirement.
The proposed salary range for this position is:
$160,000—$230,000 USD
About the Company:
Seekr is a leader in explainable and trustworthy artificial intelligence designed to power mission-critical decisions in enterprises, government, and regulated industries. SeekrFlow™, our end-to-end AI platform, provides secure, auditable AI solutions tailored to sectors where transparency, accuracy, and compliance are paramount. Available across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments, SeekrFlow reduces bias, strengthens data integrity, and simplifies model oversight so organizations can rely on trusted AI decisions in high-stakes settings that impact society’s most sensitive and vital systems. Trusted by leading enterprises and government agencies, we partner with defense, finance, telecom, and critical infrastructure leaders to enable AI solutions that drive real-world results with unmatched transparency and control. We are a team of strategic thinkers and problem-solvers tackling the toughest challenges facing critical infrastructure and global enterprises through best-in-class AI models and customer deployment. Our team operates with unwavering commitment to our core values and mission:
We are driven by outcomes—our customers' success is what we strive for every day.
We believe trust is earned, which is why we build explainability and transparency into the entire AI lifecycle.
We take our responsibility to deliver secure AI seriously.
We believe innovation drives progress—we are building the technologies that power the systems our society depends on.
Company Benefits:
Meaningful Mission & Impact - Work with a deeply talented, collaborative team solving some of the toughest AI challenges that matter.
Equity Ownership – RSUs that let you share directly in Seekr’s long‑term success and growth.
Time Off That Respects Real Life – Unlimited PTO plus 14 paid company holidays to truly recharge.
Work Your Way – A flexible hybrid work environment with offices in Reston, VA and Austin, TX.
Competitive