Staff Engineer, Director – Records & Tax Platforms

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Virginia.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the target architecture for the Records and Tax platforms, encompassing shared services, data models, and infrastructure.

• Lead design reviews and establish expectations for design documentation.

• Drive modernization efforts over multiple quarters while ensuring uninterrupted agency operations.

• Make and document decisions regarding build, buy, and refactor strategies.

• Define and enhance engineering standards for code quality, testing, APIs, data modeling, observability, deployment, and documentation.

• Implement these standards through tooling, automated checks, templates, and paved paths.

• Enhance code review processes and technical decision-making through active participation and mentorship.

• Establish targets for availability, latency, and durability, including service level objectives (SLOs) and error budgets.

• Lead architecture initiatives focused on fault tolerance, graceful degradation, disaster recovery, and data integrity.

• Plan for capacity regarding seasonal tax, recording, and reconciliation workloads.

• Take charge of performance engineering, which includes load testing, profiling, query optimization, and production instrumentation.

• Lead or provide guidance on significant incident responses and post-incident assessments.

• Collaborate with Security and Compliance on access control, auditability, data retention, redaction, and payment-adjacent controls.

• Mentor senior engineers and those on the staff track.

• Translate technical risks for executive decision-makers.

• Represent the engineering team in discussions with agency customers.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 12 years of experience in building and operating production software, with significant tenure at the staff or principal level or equivalent scope.

• Proven ownership of architecture for large, multi-team, and multi-service systems, demonstrating their resilience over time.

• Extensive experience with distributed systems, data modeling, and scalable relational databases, including live data migrations with zero tolerance for data loss.

• A track record of establishing engineering standards that have been widely adopted by teams.

• In-depth expertise in resiliency and performance, covering SLOs, capacity planning, failure-mode analysis, observability, and incident command.

• Strong background in cloud infrastructure and modern delivery practices, including Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), and progressive rollout.

• Exceptional written communication skills, including the development of design documents, Requests for Comments (RFCs), and architectural decision records.

• Ability to lead through influence without relying on formal authority.

• Proven effectiveness in a remote, distributed engineering environment.

• Experience in government technology, regulatory technology, financial technology, payments, or similar regulated fields with strict audit and compliance requirements.

• Familiarity with tax calculation, billing, or financial reconciliation systems.

• Experience with document management, content-heavy systems, or large-scale search applications.

• A history of incrementally modernizing legacy platforms while maintaining their operation.

• Knowledge of StateRAMP, FedRAMP, SOC 2, CJIS, or PCI DSS.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive benefits and compensation package.

• Fully remote work arrangement.