Senior/Staff Software Engineer (U. S. Air Force)

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services.

We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world.

If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists.

The work we do matters.

About the job

At Skylight, software engineers design, implement, and maintain software systems to improve government services for users. This software is built to meet the needs of regular users of government services as well as Skylight’s partners in government.

In this role, you’ll partner with a mission-critical organization within the U.S. Air Force Special Operations community to design, build, and maintain a secure, cross-platform situational-awareness platform delivered from a single codebase across mobile, desktop, and web. The same platform is built to serve civilian and disaster-response users, so you’ll be solving for both highly specialized operations and the broader public good.

You’ll work full-stack from a Flutter client to Go backend services applying modern engineering practices to harden security and reliability, integrate with existing defense systems, and modernize legacy environments. Much of what makes this work hard is the field itself: unreliable networks, denied environments, and a hard requirement that the tool keep working when the infrastructure doesn’t. You’ll do it in close collaboration with cross-functional teammates and government partners.

What you’ll do

Engineer full-stack software as part of a cross-functional team that includes user experience researchers and designers, product managers, engineers, and other functional specialists

Build and maintain a single cross-platform codebase (mobile, desktop, and web) backed by Go services, owning features end to end, from UI to API to datastore

Achieve technical excellence by advocating for and adhering to lean-agile engineering principles and practices such as API-first design, simple design and swappable interface seams, continuous integration, version control, and automated testing

Tackle the problems that make this domain unique like real-time communications, offline-first and resilient operation, secure transport and identity (PKI, mTLS, token-based auth), and interoperability with existing situational-awareness systems

Select and use the right tools, frameworks, languages, and technologies for the job, with a preference for open-source solutions

Analyze systems to identify technical debt, instability, unreliability, and other opportunities for improvement, as well as design, document, and communicate solutions

Coordinate with government partners to ensure seamless integration with their existing tools and processes

What we're looking for

Minimum qualifications

Strong full-stack engineering ability: you’re comfortable owning a feature across a typed client application and backend services, not just one layer

Experience with our stack (Flutter/Dart and Go) or deep, transferable experience in adjacent technologies, e.g., strong TypeScript with React (or another reactive UI framework) plus a statically-typed backend language and the appetite to ramp quickly into both

A cross-platform mindset: comfort shipping one codebase to multiple targets, and a preference for parity over per-platform forks

Experience with real-time and/or distributed systems (WebSockets, pub/sub, presence, failover), and good instincts for how software should behave offline and on unreliable networks

Comfortable building software that integrates within a broader system of systems: services, devices, and protocols you don’t fully control

Familiar with how to build secure, compliant software and defend against common vulnerabilities (TLS/mTLS, PKI, token-based auth)

Possess a foundational understanding of data engineering, including how to use various datastores (relational and embedded) to handle persistent data in software systems

Can produce high-quality code by adhering to good practices such as automated testing

Understand the different pieces of software systems and how to fit them together, while keeping performance, reliability, and availability in mind

Understand the importance of always putting users at the center of your work, including thinking through the impact and implications of any code that you write

Experience delivering products in defense or similarly regulated environments

Ability to work successfully within a professional services environment (e.g., can communicate effectively with clients)

Passionate about creating better public outcomes through great government services

A mindset and work approach that align with Skylight’s core values

Ability to travel for work from time to time

Nice-to-have qualifications

Native mobile development (Swift / Kotlin) for platform-specific work such as Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi Direct, or Apple MultipeerConnectivity

Geospatial / mapping work, or real-time audio/video (WebRTC)

Applied cryptography: Noise, MLS, FIDO2/WebAuthn, or DoD PKI / derived credentials

Familiarity with TAK (ATAK/WinTAK/iTAK), Cursor-on-Target (CoT), or other command-and-control / situational-awareness systems

Edge computing: services that run the same way from cloud to edge box to on-device

Experience across several programming languages and ecosystems

Consulting experience, and mentoring/coaching personnel

Prior experience working in the civic tech space

Experience working in a remote-team environment

Don’t meet every qualification but think you can do the job? We’d still love to hear from you. If you’re excited about the role, apply. We consider candidates with a range of backgrounds and experiences.

Other requirements

All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. This role requires U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment.

As a government contractor, you may be required to obtain a public trust or security clearance, up to Top Secret.

You may be required to complete a company background check successfully.

Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.

Position type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a fully remote position.

Care package

Salary

We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a Software Engineer at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

Associate Software Engineer: $90,000–$125,000

Software Engineer I: $120,000–$140,000

Software Engineer II: $135,000–$160,000

Senior Software Engineer: $150,000–$185,000

Staff Software Engineer: $170,000–$203,000

Principal Software Engineer: $180,000–$230,000

Benefits

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways:

Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance

Short-term and long-term disability insurance

Life and AD&D insurance

Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account

Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period

Flexible paid-time-off policy (generally around 25 days per year), plus 11 paid federal holidays

Up to 12 weeks paid-time-off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents

Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options

Business development / sales bonuses

Referral bonuses

Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development

Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases

Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)

Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year

Flexible, remote-friendly work environment

An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good

Interview tips

We want you to have a great interview experience with us! Here are some tips to help you prepare for a successful interview:

Visit our join page to learn more about how our interview process works.

Check out our Career Pathways framework to learn more about the different roles within Skylight and the skills needed to do them.

If you’d like to request reasonable accommodations during the application or interviewing process, please contact our recruiting team at recruiting@skylight.digital .

We participate in E-Verify and upon hire, will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you’re authorized to work in the U.S.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, religion, age, disability, veteran status, or any other category protected by applicable law.