Lead Software Engineer / Back-End Developer at STR
Arlington, VA
$180,000–$220,000from the description
Jul 2, 2026
Arlington, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A lead back-end engineering role on a national security-focused analytics team, building infrastructure to ingest, store, and serve large datasets — including imagery, geospatial, and structured and unstructured text. The work involves deploying advanced analytic and machine learning components across on-premises and cloud environments, and leading cross-functional software teams. An active Top Secret clearance is required.
Senior level · 5+ years · Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH · Bachelor's required · Top Secret clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
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 $169,742 (middle half $134,780–$187,781). 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)
The role is titled 'Lead Software Engineer / Back-End Developer' but carries no explicit seniority level word in the title; the title states no level. The 5+ years of enterprise software experience and team leadership requirements support a Senior classification.
The posting lists two primary locations — Woburn, MA (Boston metro) and Arlington, VA (Washington, DC metro) — with onsite work expected. The Boston CBSA is used here as the first-listed location; the Arlington, VA location (Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV CBSA 47900) is equally valid.
The clearance gate states 'Active Top Secret security clearance' as a hard requirement. The 'Even Better' section lists 'Active TS/SCI' as a preferred upgrade; the clearance requirement is set to TopSecret (the hard gate), not TopSecretSci.
The degree requirement states a degree in a relevant engineering or scientific field; equivalent experience is NOT explicitly offered as a substitute, so Bachelors is treated as a hard requirement.
The experience range '2-8+ relevant experience depending on the degree' combined with the explicit '5 years of experience in developing, deploying, or maintaining enterprise software solutions' is used as the overall years minimum (5), as it is the firmer, role-level gate.
Mobile OS knowledge (iOS/Android) is listed under the main requirements block and treated as a hard gate. iOS and Android are interchangeable alternatives for this requirement.
Kubernetes, containers, AWS tools (Route 53, EC2), ETL, machine learning, and CUDA all appear under the 'Even Better' (preferred) section and are marked accordingly.
The alternative occupation of 15-1244 is noted because the role involves deploying and maintaining infrastructure, but the primary emphasis on building software solutions, ETL pipelines, and analytic components makes 15-1252 the stronger fit.
Requires a Top 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.
Read the full posting
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