Cloud Software Engineer Level 2 – AI/ML TS/SCI w/Poly at Peraton
Laurel, MD
$135,000–$216,000from the description
Jul 12, 2026
Laurel, MD
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A mid-to-senior software engineering role focused on designing, developing, and maintaining cloud-based cyber and AI/ML capabilities on AWS infrastructure and large-scale compute clusters. The work spans the full development lifecycle — from requirements analysis and integration to testing and issue resolution — with a particular emphasis on distributed systems, big-data technologies, and emerging AI tooling such as LLMs and RAG frameworks. An active TS/SCI clearance with polygraph is required.
Senior level · 5+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
Advertised as Mid, but the requirements read as Senior.
“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
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $158,337 (middle half $126,441–$180,105). 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 (8)
The title 'Cloud Software Engineer Level 2' maps to a mid-level advertised seniority, but the actual requirements (5+ years of experience, 4+ years in high-level languages, TS/SCI with polygraph, broad distributed systems expertise) support a Senior classification.
A Bachelor's degree in CS or a related field is 'highly desired' and explicitly treated as equivalent to 2 years of experience — not a hard gate; the degree requirement is set to None accordingly.
An active TS/SCI clearance with polygraph is explicitly required as a hard gate.
The posting requires candidates to hold or be willing to obtain one of several cloud/Kubernetes certifications (AWS Certified Developer-Associate, AWS Certified ML-Associate, AWS Certified ML-Specialty, AWS DevOps Engineer Professional, or CKAD) prior to start. This is a hard gate but names no specific technology skill beyond what is already captured.
AWS Cloud Architecture, LLMs, RAG, CloudFormation/Terraform, CI/CD, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Kubernetes, and Python/scripting all appear under the 'Desired Qualifications' section and are marked as preferred accordingly.
The 'Key Technologies and Skills' section reads as narrative/context framing rather than a formal requirements block; skills from that section were cross-referenced against the formal Basic and Desired Qualifications sections to determine the required/preferred flag status.
MapReduce programming model experience (Hadoop, Hive, Pig) is captured under the Hadoop skill with alternatives, as the JD treats these as interchangeable implementations of the same paradigm.
Requires a TS/SCI 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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