Senior Software Engineer

Why This Role Matters
Senior Software Engineers are the technical anchors of our teams. You'll be the go-to person for a domain or service, ensuring that what we ship is not only functional but well-designed, tested, and sustainable. Your work will directly impact mission readiness, and your mentorship will shape the next generation of engineers at Bluestaq. You'll balance hands-on delivery with technical leadership, raising the bar for code quality and system design.

Key Responsibilities

• Own features and modules that span multiple components/services and require coordination with other teams or roles
• Design and implement non-trivial features with clear tradeoffs (performance, readability, complexity, security)
• Write solid tests (unit, integration, basic end-to-end) and help improve test coverage and reliability
• Identify and address code smells, refactoring opportunities, and tech debt in your area
• Understand core architecture patterns in use (microservices, event-driven, SPA, component-based UI) and work within them effectively
• Operate independently within your product area: scope work, make reasonable design decisions, and proactively raise risks
• Act as an escalation point for junior engineers when debugging issues or clarifying designs
• Mentor others via pairing, feedback, and sharing context, not just fixing things yourself
• Lead medium-sized features from idea → design → implementation → production → follow-up
• Debug complex issues that span multiple components or services, including production incidents
• Make incremental improvements to architecture, patterns, and tooling in your domain

Required Qualifications

• Strong proficiency in multiple programming languages and frameworks
• Proven ability to design and deliver complex features across the full stack
• Deep understanding of software architecture patterns and design principles
• Experience with automated testing strategies and test-driven development
• Track record of mentoring junior engineers and improving team practices
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills across distributed systems
• Experience with cloud platforms, containerization, and modern deployment practices
• Excellent communication skills and ability to explain technical concepts clearly

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with microservices architectures and distributed systems
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures and asynchronous processing
• Background in performance optimization and scalability
• Experience working on government, defense, or mission-critical systems
• Knowledge of security best practices and secure coding standards
• Contributions to open-source projects or technical communities
• Experience with observability tools and practices (logging, metrics, tracing)
• Familiarity with customer-facing environments, including Technical Exchange Meetings (TEMs) or similar collaborative forums with stakeholders

Required Experience and Education:

• PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field and 0+ years of software engineering or related experience, OR
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field and 2+ years of software engineering or related experience, OR
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field and 4+ years of software engineering or related experience, OR
• Associate degree in a related field and 6+ years of software engineering or related experience, OR
• High School Diploma/GED and 8+ years of software engineering or related experience.

You use modern AI tools with judgment: integrating them into workflows where they're impactful, reviewing their outputs, and handling proprietary or sensitive data responsibly.