Senior Software Engineer (Cleared)

Your Dream. Our Team.

About Rise8

Rise8 builds custom, secure software for government organizations, measuring success by impact: lives saved, time returned, and missions advanced.

We think big, start small, and scale fast with elite teams across product, design, and engineering to drive continuous delivery for critical missions.

We believe customer experience starts with employee experience, so we take care of our employees. Rise8 is where you’ll do the best work of your career—supported by a culture you won’t find anywhere else. We offer competitive pay and benefits, but what sets us apart is our commitment to autonomy, growth, and a culture rooted in kindness, candor, and continuous learning.

Certified as a Great Place to Work®, with 100% of employees saying they love working here, Rise8 is where bold ideas become real capabilities. Where mission meets meaning. And where fewer bad things happen because of bad software.

About You

• You’re mission-driven and measure success by impact (lives saved, time returned, missions advanced), not activity.
• You think big, start small, and scale fast. You treat time as the biggest vulnerability and security as something that enables speed.
• You lead with kindness and candor: you give honest feedback, take it well, and raise the bar for everyone around you.
• You’re an owner. You thrive with autonomy, act decisively, and stay steady when things are uncertain.
• You're building with AI and see it as a force multiplier not a shortcut.

As a Senior Software Engineer at Rise8, you will:

• Work with clients who may be new to modern software practices such as design thinking, AI-assisted and agentic engineering, continuous-release deployment, backlog management, or even interacting directly with the users they provide software to.
• Decompose business problems into clear, actionable instructions and specifications for agentic development.
• Be responsible for learning how your client likes to learn, how they like to receive feedback, and what ubiquitous language they use so you can speak in terms that resonate with them.
• Learn, teach, and refine your approach constantly to best collaborate towards a new way of thinking about engineering.
• On enablement engagements, pair with client developers, engineers, and military service members. Accelerate how they develop and deliver user stories that provide business value, technical feasibility, and user-driven functionality.
• Ensure that development is delivered week over week and continuously gauge feedback from real users in real time.
• Work with a balanced team in mind while building software that fits the user needs, business objectives, and stakeholder vision so the team can quickly make informed engineering decisions based on validated assumptions.
• Plan for and build delivery and user metrics into the software systems you create, so the team can measure real outcomes.
• Lead within your Rise8 product team by tracking and managing tech debt, facilitating engineering discussions, and leveling up less experienced engineers.

Qualifications

Must have an active DoD security clearance.

• 6-10 years of Software Development experience in a variety of programming languages.
• Strong communication skills and interest in a pair-programming environment.
• Experience leveraging AI in software development.
• Experience with Test Driven Development (TDD) and agile methodologies, including using AI tools to write and maintain tests.
• You have a strong understanding of algorithms, programming language theory, software architecture, networks, databases, and design patterns, and understand how to apply them.
• Experience with both frontend and backend.
• Experience using container technologies such as Docker or Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with DevSecOps tools and processes such as Git, Ansible, GitLabCI, SonarQube, Fortify, and ThreadFix.
• Demonstrated experience with API Development.
• You are comfortable running your software in Linux environments.
• You have strong facilitation skills.
• BA/BS in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in training, mentoring and/or up-skilling engineers.
• Experience developing cloud-native applications.
• Experience leading a product or development team.
• Experience building and deploying in a continuous delivery environment.
• Experience working directly with clients.
• Experience with DoD, especially at a DoD "Software Factory".

Travel

Position may require up to 25% travel in support of contract performance, customer site visits, and program activities.

Salary

The annual salary range for this role as it is posted is $143,824 to $179,780 regardless of final candidate location within the United States. The final job level and annual salary will be determined based on the education, qualification, knowledge, skills, ability, and experience of the final candidate(s), and calibrated against relevant market data and internal team equity.

Benefits

• Flexible schedule in a 100% distributed workforce
• Premium Insurance: We cover up to 100% of the employee premium and up to 80% of the combined dependent premium on our base health plan depending on pay band. We also cover 100% of the premium for employee and dependent Dental and Vision as well as employee premiums for Life and Disability coverage.
• Retirement: 401k match at 10% gross pay.
• Paid time off (PTO): 4 weeks combined accrued vacation and sick leave, 11 Federal holidays, your birthday, jury duty, and bereavement.
• Education & Training: Accrued budget of up to $4,000 per year for classes, travel, events, and materials.
• Wellness Budget: To encourage and support a well-rounded healthy lifestyle, we cover 50% reimbursement on a variety of wellness activities and products, up to $500 per calendar year.
• Equipment: We offer a MacBook Pro and multi-port adapter.

All of Rise8’s work in this area is with Federal Government customers that require our employees involved with their projects be U.S. citizens. As such, this role requires U.S. citizenship. If hired, you would also be required to go through a background investigation.

Rise8 is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer that will consider you for this role regardless of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity or expression, national origin, genetics, age, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.