Staff/Principal Software Engineer (HHS)

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists. The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, software engineers design, build, and operate production systems that make government services more reliable and accessible for the people who depend on them. In this role, you’ll help drive a major modernization effort at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), working alongside colleagues in product, design, security, data, and platform engineering to turn strategy into reality. You’ll accelerate delivery and strengthen resilience by applying modern engineering practices and secure defaults, while leaving behind patterns, documentation, and skills that empower teams to sustain and expand the work over time.

What you’ll do

• Deliver production-ready software as part of a cross-functional team and own services through build, deployment, and operations
• Apply lean-agile engineering practices — API-first, simple design, trunk-based development, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), version control, automated testing
• Standardize and automate environments with infrastructure as code (IaC) and policy as code to create secure, repeatable delivery
• Improve reliability and performance with meaningful observability — metrics, logs, traces — and use service level objectives (SLOs) to guide engineering work
• Modernize and integrate systems across cloud platforms and existing enterprise services, with a preference for open source where it fits
• Build in security, privacy, and accessibility from day one — evidence automation for compliance, defense against common vulnerabilities, and Section 508 accessibility standards
• Identify and reduce technical debt by analyzing stability and operability, then designing and communicating clear remediation plans
• Enable federal partners by sharing practices, reusable patterns, and toolkits that help them sustain and evolve improvements over time

What we're looking for

Minimum qualifications

• Ability to write clean, reliable, and reusable code for large-scale production systems
• Experience with modern delivery — continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), automated testing, code review, and operating services in cloud environments
• Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) and environment automation
• Strong understanding of secure software practices and how to integrate compliance into delivery
• Working knowledge of data persistence and patterns for building resilient, observable services
• Commitment to capacity building — mentoring, documenting, and transferring knowledge so teams can continue improving after you
• Ability to communicate clearly with executives and cross-functional teams in a professional services environment
• Passion for creating better public outcomes through great government services
• A mindset and work approach that align with Skylight’s core values
• Ability to spend time on‑site at HHS in Washington, DC — either by being based locally or by traveling regularly for in‑person work when it’s important

Nice-to-have qualifications

• Experience with containers and orchestration, such as Docker or Kubernetes
• Background in application or cloud modernization, integrations, or data-intensive products
• Experience integrating security, compliance, and governance tooling — for example, automating evidence collection, connecting ATO platforms, or streamlining workflows across enterprise systems
• Exposure to compliance environments such as the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA), or Authority to Operate (ATO) processes
• Prior experience in civic tech, government, or other highly regulated environments
• Experience working effectively on hybrid or distributed teams

Don’t meet 100% of the criteria but think you can do the job? We’d love to chat anyway! We’re on a mission to build diverse teams, and studies have shown that women and marginalized folks are less likely to apply to jobs if they don’t check every box.

Other requirements

• All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. Some federal co