Secret Software Engineer (C++) at Insight Global
Boulder, CO
$90,000–$175,000from the description
Jul 22, 2026
Boulder, CO
Jul 23, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
Software engineers at multiple experience levels are needed to develop and modernize mission-critical distributed systems within a classified aerospace and defense environment in Boulder, CO. Day-to-day work spans the full development lifecycle using C++, Python, and Linux, with the team actively transitioning toward a microservices architecture. More senior candidates may contribute to architectural decisions and mentoring.
Mid level · 2+ years · Boulder, CO · Bachelor's required · Secret clearance · Contract
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $168,179 (middle half $132,051–$211,194). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (9)
This posting covers three seniority levels simultaneously — T2 (2+ years), T3 (4+ years), and T4 (9+ years). The seniority and the overall years minimum fields reflect the T2 floor (the minimum entry point for any of the openings). Hiring managers should note that the T4 band maps to a Senior level and the T3 band to a Mid level.
The posting is contract-to-hire; compensation ($90k–$175k/year) spans all three levels and varies by education and experience.
An active Secret clearance or higher is a hard gate listed under Skills and Requirements.
A Bachelor's degree in CS, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a STEM-related field is explicitly required.
Message broker experience (ActiveMQ, ZeroMQ, RabbitMQ, Kafka) and containerization (Docker, Podman, Kubernetes) appear in the lower portion of the Skills and Requirements section, which blends required and preferred items without a clear secondary heading. These are treated as preferred given the narrative context ('experience with… such as', 'exposure to') and the explicit statement that prior microservices experience is not required.
Git, CMake, Conan, and Nexus are listed together as 'Familiarity with… or similar development tools' — treated as preferred given the 'familiarity with' framing.
Mentoring junior engineers and participating in architecture reviews are listed as preferred/contextual items relevant primarily to the T4 level.
Requires a Secret clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Posting is for a contract engagement — the market benchmarks below price full-time roles, so read the comp comparison with that in mind.
Read the full posting
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