Senior Software Development Engineer Jobs in District of Columbia
Senior Software Development Engineer jobs in District of Columbia concentrate heavily in federal government technology, defense contracting, and cybersecurity, making the metro one of the most active markets in the country for engineers at the senior level. Most hiring clusters in Washington D.C. and the surrounding Northern Virginia corridor, where anchors like Booz Allen Hamilton, Leidos, and SAIC maintain large software engineering teams. The most in-demand specialties are cloud architecture, DevSecOps, and full-stack development tied to government systems modernization. Find a role that fits below and apply directly.
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Showing 5 of 68+ Senior Software Development Engineer jobs
Location: Washington, DC 100% Onsite
Clearance: Top Secret/SCI
Job Type: Full-time
Target Salary Range*: $175,000 - $200,000
- This represents the potential salary range for this position depending on education level, years of experience and/or certifications in addition to other position specific requirements which may impact salary
Position Overview
The Data Engineering Software Developer Mid designs, builds, integrates, and maintains scalable data systems and pipelines that support analytics, reporting, and operational insight across complex enterprise environments. This role focuses on ingesting, processing, transforming, and unifying large and disparate data sources while ensuring data quality, security, performance, and compliance with DoD and DISA requirements.
The Data Engineering Software Developer Mid develops solutions using Confluent Kafka, Elastic Stack, AWS, Red Hat OpenShift/Kubernetes, data warehouses, and data lakes. The position also supports automation, CI/CD, platform optimization, visualization capabilities, and collaboration across software, data, analytics, and network operations teams.
Key Responsibilities
Data Pipeline Development and Integration
- Design, build, and maintain scalable and reliable data systems and pipelines to ingest, process, and transform large, complex, and disparate data sources for analytics and reporting.
- Unify and integrate data from multiple network operations systems into a consistent and accessible platform.
- Develop and maintain ETL/ELT processes supporting data ingestion, transformation, validation, and cleansing.
- Create and maintain Kafka, Elastic, and Logstash pipelines supporting enterprise data processing requirements.
- Automate data-related processing and monitoring activities.
Data Platforms and Software Development
- Implement data solutions using Confluent Kafka, Elastic Stack, AWS, and Red Hat OpenShift/Kubernetes.
- Develop and manage data warehouses and data lakes supporting analytics, reporting, and operational dashboards.
- Develop data-engineering capabilities using Python, Java, SQL, shell scripting, and related technologies.
- Support Kibana visualizations and dashboards using React, JavaScript, and HTML.
- Apply software engineering and automation practices to improve the maintainability and scalability of data solutions.
Performance and Platform Optimization
- Analyze and optimize data-ingestion throughput, query performance, indexing strategies, and storage efficiency across Elastic and Kafka platforms.
- Optimize infrastructure for performance, scalability, reliability, and cost effectiveness.
- Troubleshoot and resolve issues related to data ingestion, processing, storage, memory utilization, partitioning, and cluster performance.
- Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks affecting data availability and downstream analytics.
Security, Compliance, and DevOps
- Ensure data quality, accuracy, security, and compliance with applicable DoD and DISA requirements.
- Apply appropriate data security and access-control practices.
- Support CI/CD pipelines for automated build, test, and deployment activities.
- Apply version control and DevOps practices to data engineering and software development workflows.
Collaboration and Documentation
- Collaborate with data analysts, visualization engineers, software developers, and other stakeholders to deliver integrated and actionable data solutions.
- Document data architecture, integration patterns, configurations, and operational procedures.
- Develop and maintain technical documentation and runbooks supporting data platforms, pipelines, and applications.
Qualifications
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline with 4-7 years of relevant experience. [Required]
Experience
- Hands-on experience designing, building, and maintaining ETL/ELT data pipelines and integrating multiple disparate data sources. [Required]
- Experience with data warehouse and/or data lake technologies such as AWS Redshift, Amazon S3, Hadoop, Snowflake, or similar platforms. [Required]
- Experience with Elastic Stack, including Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana, and/or Kafka for data ingestion and processing. [Required]
- Experience with Linux/UNIX system administration and automation. [Required]
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, containerized pipelines, version control technologies such as Git and Bitbucket, and DevOps practices. [Required]
- Familiarity with network operations data, including logs, metrics, events, ticketing, CMDB data, and related data models.
Skills
- Proficiency with data engineering and software development technologies and languages such as Python, Java, SQL, and shell scripting. [Required]
- Knowledge of data security, access controls, and compliance frameworks, including DoD, DISA, RMF, and STIG requirements. [Required]
- Strong communication and documentation skills supporting collaboration and knowledge sharing. [Required]
Certifications
Current Security+ certification or higher/equivalent certification. [Required]
Clearance
Active TS/SCI security clearance. [Required]
Other Requirements
Willingness and ability to complete and maintain additional customer suitability screenings throughout employment. [Required]
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting DISA, DISN, or other DoD network environments.
- Experience developing and deploying software applications that meet DoD security standards, including applicable STIGs.
- Knowledge of network security, encryption, and access controls within classified environments.
- Experience with big data technologies and platforms such as Kafka, Spark, NiFi, Hadoop, Elasticsearch, Logstash, Databricks, and ELK Stack.
- Experience applying big data technologies to text mining, summarization, search, and entity extraction.
- Experience with cloud-based data platforms, including AWS, Azure, GCP, or AWS GovCloud.
- Experience with cloud-integrated platforms and Infrastructure as Code, including networking and security policies.
- Familiarity with Kubernetes deployment, platform upgrades, and patching.
- Experience with configuration management technologies such as Ansible, Puppet, or Chef.
- Experience with monitoring, alerting, and observability technologies such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Elastic.
- Experience with business intelligence and visualization tools such as Kibana.
- Experience developing and maintaining technical documentation and operational runbooks.
- Strong understanding and practical experience with Agile methodologies, including Scrum and SAFe.
- Experience with Atlassian Jira and Confluence.
- Confluent Developer certification.
- Elastic Certified Engineer certification.
- Experience working remotely with geographically dispersed teams and within matrixed organizations.
- Experience combining software development, integration, and data engineering practices.
- Experience applying knowledge of system architecture, networking, and centralized logging using ELK to support data transformation initiatives.
Location: Washington, DC 100% Onsite
Clearance: Top Secret/SCI
Job Type: Full-time
Target Salary Range*: $175,000 - $200,000
- This represents the potential salary range for this position depending on education level, years of experience and/or certifications in addition to other position specific requirements which may impact salary
Position Overview
The Data Engineering Software Developer Mid designs, builds, integrates, and maintains scalable data systems and pipelines that support analytics, reporting, and operational insight across complex enterprise environments. This role focuses on ingesting, processing, transforming, and unifying large and disparate data sources while ensuring data quality, security, performance, and compliance with DoD and DISA requirements.
The Data Engineering Software Developer Mid develops solutions using Confluent Kafka, Elastic Stack, AWS, Red Hat OpenShift/Kubernetes, data warehouses, and data lakes. The position also supports automation, CI/CD, platform optimization, visualization capabilities, and collaboration across software, data, analytics, and network operations teams.
Key Responsibilities
Data Pipeline Development and Integration
- Design, build, and maintain scalable and reliable data systems and pipelines to ingest, process, and transform large, complex, and disparate data sources for analytics and reporting.
- Unify and integrate data from multiple network operations systems into a consistent and accessible platform.
- Develop and maintain ETL/ELT processes supporting data ingestion, transformation, validation, and cleansing.
- Create and maintain Kafka, Elastic, and Logstash pipelines supporting enterprise data processing requirements.
- Automate data-related processing and monitoring activities.
Data Platforms and Software Development
- Implement data solutions using Confluent Kafka, Elastic Stack, AWS, and Red Hat OpenShift/Kubernetes.
- Develop and manage data warehouses and data lakes supporting analytics, reporting, and operational dashboards.
- Develop data-engineering capabilities using Python, Java, SQL, shell scripting, and related technologies.
- Support Kibana visualizations and dashboards using React, JavaScript, and HTML.
- Apply software engineering and automation practices to improve the maintainability and scalability of data solutions.
Performance and Platform Optimization
- Analyze and optimize data-ingestion throughput, query performance, indexing strategies, and storage efficiency across Elastic and Kafka platforms.
- Optimize infrastructure for performance, scalability, reliability, and cost effectiveness.
- Troubleshoot and resolve issues related to data ingestion, processing, storage, memory utilization, partitioning, and cluster performance.
- Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks affecting data availability and downstream analytics.
Security, Compliance, and DevOps
- Ensure data quality, accuracy, security, and compliance with applicable DoD and DISA requirements.
- Apply appropriate data security and access-control practices.
- Support CI/CD pipelines for automated build, test, and deployment activities.
- Apply version control and DevOps practices to data engineering and software development workflows.
Collaboration and Documentation
- Collaborate with data analysts, visualization engineers, software developers, and other stakeholders to deliver integrated and actionable data solutions.
- Document data architecture, integration patterns, configurations, and operational procedures.
- Develop and maintain technical documentation and runbooks supporting data platforms, pipelines, and applications.
Qualifications
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline with 4-7 years of relevant experience. [Required]
Experience
- Hands-on experience designing, building, and maintaining ETL/ELT data pipelines and integrating multiple disparate data sources. [Required]
- Experience with data warehouse and/or data lake technologies such as AWS Redshift, Amazon S3, Hadoop, Snowflake, or similar platforms. [Required]
- Experience with Elastic Stack, including Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana, and/or Kafka for data ingestion and processing. [Required]
- Experience with Linux/UNIX system administration and automation. [Required]
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines, containerized pipelines, version control technologies such as Git and Bitbucket, and DevOps practices. [Required]
- Familiarity with network operations data, including logs, metrics, events, ticketing, CMDB data, and related data models.
Skills
- Proficiency with data engineering and software development technologies and languages such as Python, Java, SQL, and shell scripting. [Required]
- Knowledge of data security, access controls, and compliance frameworks, including DoD, DISA, RMF, and STIG requirements. [Required]
- Strong communication and documentation skills supporting collaboration and knowledge sharing. [Required]
Certifications
Current Security+ certification or higher/equivalent certification. [Required]
Clearance
Active TS/SCI security clearance. [Required]
Other Requirements
Willingness and ability to complete and maintain additional customer suitability screenings throughout employment. [Required]
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting DISA, DISN, or other DoD network environments.
- Experience developing and deploying software applications that meet DoD security standards, including applicable STIGs.
- Knowledge of network security, encryption, and access controls within classified environments.
- Experience with big data technologies and platforms such as Kafka, Spark, NiFi, Hadoop, Elasticsearch, Logstash, Databricks, and ELK Stack.
- Experience applying big data technologies to text mining, summarization, search, and entity extraction.
- Experience with cloud-based data platforms, including AWS, Azure, GCP, or AWS GovCloud.
- Experience with cloud-integrated platforms and Infrastructure as Code, including networking and security policies.
- Familiarity with Kubernetes deployment, platform upgrades, and patching.
- Experience with configuration management technologies such as Ansible, Puppet, or Chef.
- Experience with monitoring, alerting, and observability technologies such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Elastic.
- Experience with business intelligence and visualization tools such as Kibana.
- Experience developing and maintaining technical documentation and operational runbooks.
- Strong understanding and practical experience with Agile methodologies, including Scrum and SAFe.
- Experience with Atlassian Jira and Confluence.
- Confluent Developer certification.
- Elastic Certified Engineer certification.
- Experience working remotely with geographically dispersed teams and within matrixed organizations.
- Experience combining software development, integration, and data engineering practices.
- Experience applying knowledge of system architecture, networking, and centralized logging using ELK to support data transformation initiatives.
See All 68 Senior Software Development Engineer Jobs in District of Columbia
Find roles in District of Columbia that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
Find JobsSenior Software Development Engineer Jobs by City in District of Columbia
Where District of Columbia roles are concentrated, by current openings.
Senior Software Development Engineer Job Market in District of Columbia
A snapshot from current District of Columbia openings, updated as new roles post.
Who's Hiring
What District of Columbia Employers Look For
The qualifications that appear most often in senior software development engineer jobs across District of Columbia.
- Active security clearance or eligibility for federal government or defense contractor roles
- Seven or more years of professional software development experience across the full stack
- Proficiency in Java, Python, or C++ with demonstrated systems design expertise
- Experience delivering cloud-native solutions on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud platforms
- Strong background in agile development methodologies and DevSecOps practices
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a closely related field
Senior Software Development Engineer Jobs in District of Columbia: Frequently Asked Questions
How do you become a senior software development engineer in District of Columbia?
Reaching the senior level in District of Columbia typically requires a bachelor's degree in computer science or software engineering combined with several years of progressive development experience. Because a large share of roles here support federal agencies or defense programs, obtaining or maintaining a federal security clearance is one of the most decisive factors in moving into senior positions. Candidates who build expertise in government-adjacent technologies, such as FedRAMP-compliant cloud environments or classified system development, advance fastest in the D.C. market.
How much do senior software development engineers make in District of Columbia?
Senior software development engineers in District of Columbia earn a median of about $136,880 a year, based on May 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, ranging from around $85,140 for the lowest 10% to over $197,000 for the top 10%. Pay rises with experience, specialty, and employer.
Which companies hire senior software development engineers in District of Columbia?
District of Columbia senior software development engineer roles are posted by Anduril, Microsoft, and The MIL Corporation and others right now, based on current listings on Migrate Mate as of September 2026. The D.C. market is especially driven by large defense contractors, federal IT integrators, and civilian agency modernization programs that consistently maintain senior engineering headcount throughout the year.
Which District of Columbia cities have the most senior software development engineer jobs?
Washington have the most senior software development engineer openings in District of Columbia. Washington D.C. itself anchors the market through federal agency headquarters and their prime contractors, while neighboring Northern Virginia areas draw significant volume from major defense and intelligence-sector employers that concentrate their software teams just outside the District boundaries.
Are there remote senior software development engineer jobs in District of Columbia?
Yes, and more than most fields. About 85% of senior software development engineer openings tied to District of Columbia are remote or hybrid as of September 2026, reflecting how naturally suited the role is to distributed work. That said, positions supporting classified federal programs or requiring on-site access to secure facilities remain predominantly in-person, so the remote share is highest for commercial and unclassified government IT work.
How can I get hired as a senior software development engineer in District of Columbia with little or no experience?
The most realistic entry path in D.C. is through associate or junior software developer roles at federal contractors, where firms like Booz Allen Hamilton and Leidos run structured early-career programs designed to bring in new graduates and develop them toward senior positions over time. Pursuing an entry-level clearance during this period is a meaningful edge, since cleared junior engineers are in high demand. Lateral moves from adjacent roles in systems administration, QA engineering, or DevOps also provide a strong foundation for growing into a senior software development engineer position.
Where can I find and apply to senior software development engineer jobs in District of Columbia?
You can find and apply to senior software development engineer jobs in District of Columbia on Migrate Mate, which lists current openings from employers actively hiring in the region. Find the roles that fit your background and apply directly to the ones that match your experience and goals.
See All 68 Senior Software Development Engineer Jobs in District of Columbia
Find roles in District of Columbia that match your experience and apply in just a few clicks.
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