Principal Software Engineer

A1M Solutions is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to help address systemic challenges in State Medicaid Enterprise System modernization with a small cross-functional scrum team. The role provides technical strategy and hands-on engineering leadership, and advises the contract on Medicaid policy analysis tools and process automation opportunities.

Responsibilities:

• In this role, you will work with a small cross-functional scrum team to investigate and understand systemic challenges with State Medicaid Enterprise System modernization
• You will work with the team to interview states and vendors about their implementation challenges and recommend to the client systems improvements and other interventions
• You will serve as a technical solutions advisor to the contract as a whole, advising on:
• Development of Medicaid policy analysis tools
• How to identify, build, and sustain process automation opportunities
• Shape technical strategy across contracts and programs, translating business and policy goals into a direction for development practices at A1M
• Drive architectural decisions and support team members, cross-disciplinary partners and clients through decision making, sponsorship and execution
• Bring a product mindset to engineering work, understanding why it matters to the people using it and, how to build maintainable solutions with the greatest impact per cost
• Position and communicate technical work in terms that make sense within each client's specific goals and context, translating engineering decisions into business and mission value
• Lead stakeholder conversations about best options, including difficult limitations
• Orchestrate technical staffing and team composition across the lifecycle of a product or engagement, matching the right expertise to the right phase of work
• Identify gaps in skills, information, or staffing and recommend solutions
• Seek out and share new technologies and skills that support project and organizational goals
• Participate in hands-on building and maintaining of complex, scalable solutions across application development, infrastructure, and/or data engineering – including code reviews, technical design and committing code on projects
• Own components or services from development through deployment, monitoring, and production support
• Deploy and manage systems in cloud environments using CI/CD and infrastructure as code
• Work with APIs, databases, and data pipelines, to support system application integration and data flow
• Drive testing, code quality, ai usage and dev ops practices across teams, projects, or contracts
• Approach technical work collaboratively and human-centered by default, actively involving the people a system serves and affects rather than designing in isolation
• Advise, guide, and build connections across teams, projects, or contracts to improve delivery processes and skills for communication and collaboration
• Evaluate the skills and deliverables of teams, projects, or contracts and take action based on that assessment
• Get buy-in from relevant parties (teammates, team leads, government stakeholders, etc.) to make sure necessary work happens
• Proactively recognize risks and conflicts within the team and clients, help identify approaches, and take action, including managing up (understanding timing, context and other pressures, etc.) and escalating when appropriate
• Shape practice and discipline approach and strategy for collaboration with people in other practices and disciplines, including coaching and mentoring models
• Identify and help resolve causes of contract and project problems that involve people across multiple practices or disciplines
• Initiate and drive projects that require working with multiple people in other disciplines and practices on challenging problems
• Anticipate and proactively provide information needed by other practices and disciplines
• Proactively identify and respond to government requirements or policy that may impact project work, such as accessibility, PRA, FOIA, acquisition regulations, and security compliance
• Sufficient government understanding to anticipate needs of government partners and users, and be prepared to speak to them proactively
• Coach others on government requirements, culture, and expertise relevant to their practice or discipline
• Trusted to represent the company and team to clients, including in challenging situations
• Operate with high autonomy and initiative, delivering strong work consistently
• Use breadth of experience to anticipate opportunities and challenges
• Engage with managers, practice directors, and leadership to shape discipline growth, staffing and organizational strategy aligned to A1M’s values
• Occasionally contribute above and beyond during peak periods, including evenings or weekend work when necessary to support client needs, deadlines, or strategic growth initiatives (expected to be the exception rather than the norm)
• Use influence within billable work to highlight growth opportunities with A1M partners
• Proactively identify and cultivate growth opportunities within contracts by identifying client needs or gaps and working with others to architect concepts to meet those needs
• Contribute to growth, such as making connections to teaming partners, writing white papers, or contributing to proposals
• Increase A1M’s external visibility through conferences, blogs, or social media
• Partner with Practice Director on career lattice, hiring practices, and discipline growth, and help ensure high quality delivery of discipline work across project
• Mentor across levels and disciplines, support remote practice culture, and build discipline community

Requirements:

• 12+ years of relevant professional experience
• Ability to write high-quality, working, and reusable application code
• Advanced proficiency in modern software development languages and systems
• Expertise in how to build secure, compliant software and minimize risk of vulnerabilities
• Expertise in one or more adjacent specializations like data engineering, Dev Ops, accessibility and comfortable expanding skills, as needed
• Capable of operating with high autonomy in ambiguous environments, identifying high impact work independently, executing on it, and shaping strategic direction beyond a single project
• Proven ability to communicate technical results clearly and effectively to diverse stakeholders, including in politically or strategically sensitive contexts
• Experience working or integrating with legacy systems
• Experience working on large-scale applications and systems
• Experience working in government consulting engagements
• Experience integrating AI with engineering work, with a thoughtful and ethical approach to its application
• Track record of mentoring across levels and disciplines and contributing to organizational or discipline level growth
• Confidence assessing technical candidates and advising on key hiring decisions
• Vision for creating standards for how A1M delivers technical work across engineering, data, and technical product delivery
• Ability to assess technical delivery quality and recognize the signals of poor delivery before issues are created
• Experience contributing to business development, such as proposals or white papers
• You must already have legal authorization to work within the US and not require ongoing visa sponsorship to maintain legal authorization to work
• You must be a permanent US resident
• Experience working with a social impact-focused product team or in civic tech
• Experience working with distributed, cross-functional teams, including product managers, designers, engineers, and subject matter experts
• Personal experience with government health and human services programs
• Working knowledge of Medicaid or CHIP, Medicaid Enterprise System, Medicare, the ACA or MACRA
• Familiarity with SAFe and agile methodologies
• Resource management experience, with a strong grasp of which expertise plays which role on a team and an opinion on when to deploy specialized versus generalized resources
• Ability to manage data resources alongside traditional technical roles and product managers