Software Architect at Steampunk
McLean, VA
$112,000–$225,000from the description
Jul 26, 2026
McLean, VA
Jul 29, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A federal contractor role embedded in a DevSecOps practice, designing and building cloud-native microservices and APIs for government clients in the DC/MD/VA area. The position spans the full software lifecycle — architecture, coding, automated testing, CI/CD pipeline work, containerization, and production support — with an expectation of mentoring junior engineers. Suits an experienced software developer comfortable working in regulated, security-conscious environments.
Senior level · 8+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · Secret clearance · Full-time
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“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 $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 29, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The clearance requirement is stated as 'ability to obtain' a U.S. government Security Clearance — not a requirement to hold an active clearance at time of hire. The level is unspecified (not explicitly Secret or Top Secret), but given the federal contractor/DoD context, Secret is the most common baseline; this is a judgement call.
React appears in the programming languages list alongside Java, Ruby, C++, and C — it is a front-end framework rather than a language, but it is listed verbatim in the required qualifications block and is captured accordingly.
The 8-year experience requirement is stated per technology category (programming languages, Git, scripting languages), not as a single overall role-level requirement; the overall years minimum is set to 8 as the dominant stated floor.
The role title includes 'Architect' but the JD describes individual-contributor software development work with no org-wide architectural authority or people-management scope, so it is classified as Senior rather than Staff or Principal.
Agile appears only under Preferred qualifications (5 years of application development experience in an Agile environment) and is marked accordingly.
The three certifications (AWS Cloud Practitioner, AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Azure Developer Associate) are listed under Preferred and are marked as such.
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.
Read the full posting
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