Position Overview

The Software Engineer position is part of a dynamic team at the forefront of implementing infrastructure designs to support the next generation of cyberspace operations.  This role presents unique opportunities to iterate, streamline, and scale your platform’s capabilities to meet the demand for broad deployment and exceptional flexibility.  In this role, your team will implement a platform that simplifies complex infrastructure management across a mix of cloud-native and on-premises environments.  Your work will involve scalable systems architecture; implementing GitOps workflows for version-controlled and automated operations; and creating and leveraging tools and processes that bridge the gap between development and operations while simultaneously enhancing productivity and reliability across diverse infrastructure settings.

Key Responsibilities

• Participate and lead design and architecture of back-end systems
• Deploy and maintain a robust and high-quality platform, putting the user’s requirements first and  always driving towards a working product on-time 
• Limit and resource test the platform
• Facilitate delivery and deployment of the platform

Qualifications

• Must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance (note, only US Citizens are eligible for security clearances) with CI polygraph
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline (degree requirement can be met with four years of hands on experience in a software engineer or similar full time position)
• Must be able to demonstrate the ability to deploy, maintain, and monitor hardware, docker containers, and Kubernetes clusters with limited supervision - this is typically achieved after a minimum of 2 years of full time industry experience and a bachelors degree
• Proficient in containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Podman)
• Proficient with container orchestration using Kubernetes
• Proficient with Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform preferred)
• Comfortable and proficient in Linux-based development environments
• Ability to collaborate as a team but execute independently
• Comfortable in a high-trust, adaptable, team environment
• Proficient in system architecture and design
• Proficient in on-premises system troubleshooting
• Proficient with source code management tools like Git, GitHub or GitLab

Preferred Qualifications

• Active US TS/SCI security clearance with CI polygraph or higher
• More than 5 years of industry experience in a platform engineering, DevOps or similar role in the Cyber Operation Domain
• Experience communicating with customers and end-users

Location and Clearance

• This is a hybrid position with an expected 2-3 days onsite on an "as needed" basis with no minimum required time. Clarity Innovations strives to set consistent expectations and ensure a flexible and healthy work-life balance, but due to the position's nature and emergent customer needs, some weeks may exceed 2-3 days and others may require no onsite work.
• This position is available in both Herndon, VA or Columbia, MD, and will require a counterintelligence polygraph within six months after hire. Candidates desiring to be based out of Fort Meade will require a counterintelligence polygraph prior to hiring.

Position Overview

This position is part of a dynamic team at the forefront of developing critical components of a next generation, distributed cyber network operations platform providing novel solutions to challenges that cyber missions face at scale. In this role, you will directly contribute to the core messaging framework at the heart of intra-platform orchestration. Your work on the team will be to directly contribute to the design and implementation of microservices written in Python and Go, containerized via Docker images, and deployed into a Kubernetes cluster. A developer that will flourish in this role will have a broad purview of experiences including secure networking practices such as implementing mTLS at the application and service-mesh layer, leveraging gRPC to facilitate intra-process comms, and debugging GQL APIs. Additionally, this role presents unique opportunities, such as engagement with our customers and end-user groups to help iterate and streamline functionality. 

The ideal candidate takes pride in the work that they do and strives for excellence in everything. They run towards a challenge and intentionally seek out hard problems that push them out of their comfort zone. They understand that the mission we support is bigger than any one individual and has a massive impact on our country’s national security. The team dynamic is relational, humble, and excellent. We own up to our mistakes quickly and readily, we think about how our work affects the personal lives of our teammates, and we do not settle for average solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Designs, develops, documents, tests and debugs software applications and systems while providing solutions to a variety of technical problems of moderate scope and complexity.
• Develop robust and high-quality software aligned with the overall product vision, balancing user requirements with strategic goals and consistently delivering working solutions on schedule.
• Contributes to the completion of milestones associated with specific projects and CI development to ensure smooth versioning/release cycles.
• Build and integrate automated testing into the product’s codebase.
• Foster a collaborative team environment, mentoring more junior developers when applicable and coordinating efforts across cross-functional teams to ensure project success.

Qualifications

• Must have a current TS/SCI active security clearance (note, only US Citizens are eligible for security clearances).
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline. (Degree requirement can be met with four years of hands-on experience in a Software Engineering or similar full-time position.)
• Ability to collaborate as a team but execute independently.
• Thrives in a high-trust, adaptable team environment.
• Familiar with contributing to or leading the design of new capabilities.
• Knowledge and expertise with the Go and/or Python programming languages.
• Must be comfortable with containerization and deploying and debugging containerized services (e.g. Docker, Podman).
• Knowledge of security concepts, networks, and system internals to apply in daily tasks. 
• Proficient in Linux-based development environments (e.g., Ubuntu, RedHat Enterprise Linux, or derivatives).
• Proficient writing Automated Tests (e.g., unit tests, acceptance tests, system/integration tests).
• Proficient with version control software such as Git and hosted code repositories, such as GitLab, along with basic CI/CD concepts..

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building and operating Go-based microservice distributed system architectures.

• Experience with Kubernetes (K8s) deployment strategies, cluster lifecycle (deployment, troubleshooting, scaling), and container orchestration.
• Experience implementing modern DevOps practices and tools (e.g., CI/CD, IaC, GitOps) in production deployment workflows.

Role

This position is for a systems administrator that enjoys building hardware-based operational platforms using internal and external products to include Linux OS images, Kubernetes cluster deployment, and logging systems. As a software engineer, you will be responsible for deploying OS images to hardware, managing an RKE2 multi-node Kubernetes cluster, managing additional containers, network policies, and other Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions to the cluster, and initial monitoring and maintenance of the cluster. As the systems administrator, on-site support is expected.

Responsibilities

• Participate and lead design and architecture of back-end systems
• Deploy and maintain a robust and high-quality platform, putting the user’s requirements first and always driving towards a working product on-time
• Limit and resource test the platform
• Facilitate delivery and deployment of the platform

Required Qualifications

• Must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance (only US Citizens are eligible for security clearances).
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline. In the absence of one of the aforementioned degrees, this requirement can be met with four years of hands-on experience in a Software Engineering or similar full-time position.
• A strong desire to respond to and meet user needs, exemplified by listening, documenting, disseminating, and prioritizing user needs over "nice to haves."
• Willingness to ask questions and stay engaged with team members when tasks are unclear or blockers are encountered.
• Ability to identify necessary tasks, communicate those to the broader team for feedback, and then largely execute independently.
• Trustworthy and able to adapt when project requirements change.
• Able and willing to contribute to the design process for new software features and capabilities.
• Knowledge, expertise, and proficiency with one or more common, general purpose programming languages (Go, Python, C, Rust, JavaScript, etc.). Being language agnostic is a plus (i.e. picking the right tool for the job, not just picking one tool for all jobs).
• Able to set up and maintain one's own development system (e.g., Ubuntu VM) in a cloud-based platform, including personalized IDE settings, access keys, system package updates, etc.
• Familiar and comfortable working with containers, including creating, deploying, and debugging custom images with common tools (Docker, Podman, etc.).
• Familiarity with cloud-based computing resources (e.g., AWS, Azure).
• Knowledge of security concepts, networks, and system internals to use on a daily basis.
• Ability to work with and troubleshoot real hardware of varying types (network switches, servers, routers, hubs, etc.).
• Proficient in Linux-based development environments (e.g., Debian- or RedHat-based distributions).
• Proficient with version control software (e.g., Git) and repository hosting tools (e.g., GitLab).
• Willingness and ability to travel up to 15% of the year, including both travel that is local to the DC, Maryland, Virginia (DMV) area and travel to multiple sites in the United States.

Preferred Qualifications (in addition to the required qualifications)

• Current US TS/SCI security clearance
• 2 years of industry experience in a platform engineering, DevOps or similar role in the Cyber Operation Domain
• Experience communicating with customers and end-users

Principal AI Engineer

Location: Herndon, VA (On-site)

Experience Level: 6-10 years of experience

Security Clearance: TS/SCI Required

Overview

Clarity Innovations is seeking a Principal AI Engineer to join the AI Enablement Team. In this role, you will be a key contributor to operationalizing, securing, and maturing artificial intelligence capabilities within the Joint Development Environment (JDE) and various operational platform environments. You will help build and maintain the AI "path-to-prod," ensuring a stable and scalable AI technical stack across multiple mission operational environments and development spaces for various cyber tools and capabilities. Our project lays the AI “plumbing” for accessing models and inference through a continually evolving single AI run stack. 

Background 

This project is focused on providing a unified interface for AI model access, enabling users to leverage both local open-source and Cloud Service Provider (CSP) managed models (such as AWS Bedrock and Azure OpenAI). The project aims to supercharge users by integrating AI access, tools, and frameworks into their workflows, from general content creation to advanced AI-powered development tools. You will be working with Clarity’s AI access platform, to centralize API management and streamline AI enablement. In addition, you will provide expert recommendations for adoption of AI across various enterprise teams to include agentic orchestration, spec-driven development, and MLOps workflows. 

Primary Responsibilities

• Contribute to the build-out and day-to-day execution of the AI access platform and the AI run stack, based on K8s
• Manage and automate the deployment of core AI services using a standardized K8s framework
• Facilitate the integration and serving of various frontier models (e.g., Claude, GPT) and local inference engines (e.g., vLLM) through OpenAI-compatible interfaces and AI access gateways (e.g., Open WebUI).
• Design and implement MLOps pipelines to support the full lifecycle of AI-enabled applications.
• Help inform the standards of AI-enabled development the enterprise customer and development teams should adopt (i.e., spec-driven standards for agentic development, AI-coding workflows, skills libraries, etc.) 
• Help inform and develop MCP-based tools to improve the platform and team workflows / tasks

Requirements

• Ability to collaborate as a team but execute independently
• Thrives in a high-trust, adaptable team environment
• Proficiency in working with Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), and agentic workflows.
• Strong proficiency in modern programming languages (e.g., Python, Go) and building/consuming RESTful APIs
• Proficient with Kubernetes (K8s) deployment strategies, cluster lifecycle (deployment, troubleshooting, scaling), and container orchestration
• Ability to be high side / on customer site 2-3 days per week on average (in Herndon, VA headquarters and then occasionally traveling to customer site in Columbia, MD)

Education & Experience

• 6-10 years of professional experience in software engineering, with a significant focus on AI/ML and cloud-native infrastructure.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, or a related technical field.

Nice-To-Haves

• Experience working with NVIDIA AI Enterprise, Nemo Agent Toolkit, and NIMs
• Experience with K8s-based platforms, including declarative deployments, GitOps (e.g., ArgoCD, FluxCD)
• Familiarity with OpenTelemetry (OTEL) for tracking LLM traces, metrics, and inference tracking (FinOps workflows)
• Experience working within the cyberspace domain and offensive cyber operations
• TS/SCI w/ CI Poly (TS/SCI is required, Poly is nice-to-have)