Principal Engineer
Raft Company Website2 months ago
Fort Hood, TX, USAStaff+
Base Salary
$160k - $220k/yr
Responsibilities
- Serve as Raft’s embedded senior technical lead at Fort Hood for Army customers, program offices, and partner integrators.
- Own product deployment and fielding, including environment preparation, installation, configuration, integration, validation, and sustainment.
- Write, debug, and contribute production code in Go, Java, or Rust and turn field-driven needs into durable product features.
- Build and maintain installation, integration, troubleshooting, and operational playbooks for connected, disconnected, and degraded environments.
- Apply DevSecOps practices including container builds, infrastructure as code, secrets management, and security controls.
- Deploy and debug Kubernetes workloads, including Helm charts and manifests, pods, networking, storage, ingress, and operators.
- Integrate Raft products with Army data sources, mission systems, and partner platforms.
- Provide hands-on enablement to operators and developers and represent Raft with senior Army stakeholders.
- Translate customer feedback and field lessons into actionable input for product, engineering, and growth teams.
- Escalate field issues appropriately and coordinate support from the broader Raft team.
Requirements
- At least 5 years of hands-on software engineering experience writing, debugging, and shipping production code in complex enterprise or government environments.
- Active Secret clearance required at the start of employment; U.S. citizenship and eligibility for employment on U.S. programs are required.
- Production backend coding experience in at least one of Go, Java, or Rust.
- Strong DevSecOps experience with container builds, infrastructure as code, secrets management, and production security controls.
- Working proficiency deploying, configuring, and debugging Kubernetes-based products, including Helm, manifests, operators, pod and networking troubleshooting, storage, and ingress.
- Strong Bash and Python scripting skills for automation, integration tooling, and operational playbooks.
- Experience creating runbooks and reproducible procedures for engineers and customer administrators.
- Working understanding of U.S. Army missions, organizational structure, and Army data sources such as command-and-control, intelligence, logistics, and sensor data.
- Strong customer-facing communication skills with senior Army stakeholders, partner integrators, operators, and engineering teams.
- Ability to make pragmatic field decisions under ambiguity and recognize when to escalate.
- Ability to obtain Security+ certification within the first 90 days.
- Must be willing to commute to or relocate within reasonable distance of Fort Hood, Texas.
- Preferred qualifications include Fort Hood or Army program experience, including C5ISR Center, PEO C3T, PEO IEW&S, DEVCOM, NGC2, or IBCS.
- Preferred experience includes Army data standards and mission systems, tactical-edge Kubernetes platforms, DDIL environments, IL4–IL6 environments, RMF/ATO processes, DoD compliance frameworks, data platforms, streaming systems, AI/ML deployment, Kafka, Iceberg, vector stores, model serving, or agentic workflows.
- Prior military service or significant experience working alongside uniformed operators and Army units is preferred.
- Active Top Secret or Top Secret/SCI clearance is strongly preferred, and candidates must be eligible and willing to obtain Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility.
Benefits
- Onsite position at Fort Hood, Texas, with candidates required to live within commuting distance or relocate.
- Up to 30% travel to other Army units, Raft sites, and customer locations.
- Fully covered healthcare, dental, and vision coverage.
- 401(k) with company match.
- Take-as-needed paid time off and 11 paid holidays.
- Education and training benefits.
- Annual budget for technology and gadget needs.
- Generous referral bonuses.
Tech Stack
Categories
BackendForward Deployed
About Raft Company Website
Raft is a defense technology company that builds AI/ML, autonomous data fusion, and cloud-native software platforms for U.S. military and government agencies. It develops distributed data systems, DevSecOps/GitOps platforms, and applications to operate at scale in secure environments. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, the privately held firm is backed by Washington Harbour Partners, which invested $60M in private equity funding in 2024.