Lead Software Architect (2026-0134)

Chantilly, VA
Full Time
NSD
Experienced
Acclaim Technical Services, founded in 2000, is a leading cyber operations, intelligence solutions and operations, network infrastructure, engineering and business enablement and enterprise operations company supporting a wide range of U.S. Federal agencies. We are an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) company, which is uncommon within our business sector. We see this as a significant strength, and it shows: ATS is consistently ranked as a top workplace among DC area firms and continues to grow.

We are actively hiring a Software Architect with a TS/SCI clearance and polygraph to support a program in Chantilly, VA.  In this role you will lead the architecture, technical evolution, and operational design of a large-scale, globally distributed mission platform deployed across multiple countries and managed remotely from the United States.  This platform supports real-time transaction processing, distributed data management, integration with external government and commercial systems, peripheral/device orchestration, and centralized observability and administration.

The successful candidate will be the overall software architecture authority for a modern Linux-based platform composed of approximately 25 core microservices and a broad set of supporting/integration services. The environment is cloud-heavy, distributed, operationally critical, and deployed in both constrained edge settings and larger centralized/cloud environments. This role requires someone who can define and govern architecture while remaining grounded in the realities of runtime operations, resilience, fieldability, and maintainability.

What You'll Be Doing:
  • Own the overall software architecture for a distributed microservices platform running across global environments
  • Maintain and evolve an ecosystem of approximately 25 core Java-based microservices and a comparable set of supporting and integration services
  • Define and govern architecture across service boundaries and contracts, data flows and event patterns, control plane and backplane behavior, node roles and deployment topologies, observability, fault tolerance, and service recovery.
  • Lead architecture for a platform based on: RHEL / Rocky Linux, Java (JDK 21+), Vue.js 3 frontends, MongoDB for persistent data, Elasticsearch / Logstash and RabbitMQ for ephemeral/search/event data flows, Consul, Nomad, and Vault for service discovery, orchestration, and secrets management
  • Architect deployment patterns for multiple node types, including server nodes, data nodes, arbiter nodes, workstation/user-facing nodes
  • Guide the technical design of core operational services responsible for: transactional processing, rules/screening/correlation workflows, authorization and access control, reference/master data management, language/internationalization support, health/status services, biometric or matching-oriented services built on open-source components,
  • Oversee architecture for peripheral/device services supporting integration with a broad set of external devices and sensors
  • Lead integration architecture for external standards-based and partner system interfaces, including third-party government systems, commercial travel/identity/manifest-style systems, country/customer-specific extensions
  • Ensure the platform remains remotely observable, supportable, and maintainable across all deployments
  • Partner with cloud, network, security, data, field engineering, and operations teams to align architecture with deployment realities
  • Review and guide software design decisions, technical debt reduction, modernization priorities, and roadmap sequencing
  • Serve as a senior technical authority in design reviews, readiness reviews, problem resolution, and major incident analysis

Required Skills:
  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical field. (4 Additional years of experience can substitute for a degree.)
  • 12+ years of software engineering experience, including significant time in software architecture roles for distributed or mission-critical systems
  • 5+ years architecting microservices-based platforms in production
  • Demonstrated ability to serve as the technical authority over a multi-service software ecosystem
  • Experience guiding multiple development teams and reviewing architecture across service boundaries
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, including ability to produce design artifacts and present architecture decisions clearly
  • Experience balancing long-term architecture quality with delivery constraints and operational realities
  • Deep hands-on expertise with: Java on modern JDKs, preferably JDK 21+, Linux-based production environments, preferably RHEL / Rocky Linux, distributed service design and operational patterns
  • Strong experience with MongoDB, Elasticsearch / Logstash, RabbitMQ or equivalent event/messaging platforms, service discovery/orchestration/secrets technologies such as Consul, Nomad, Vault, Kubernetes, or similar
  • Experience designing systems that operate across constrained edge environments, centralized or cloud-heavy environments, globally distributed deployments with intermittent or variable connectivity
  • Proven ability to architect for: resilience and graceful degradation, observability and diagnosability, secure service-to-service communication, multi-role user administration and authorization, remote support and lifecycle management
  • Domestic and/or international project travel may be required.

Desired Skills:
  • Master’s degree in data engineering, Computer Science, Analytics, or related field
  • Experience with Vue.js 3 and modern frontend architecture patterns for administrative or operational interfaces
  • Experience with hybrid cloud and cloud-heavy deployments where backend services are centralized and edge nodes are thin
  • Experience integrating with external standards-based government, identity, travel, or partner ecosystems
  • Experience designing platforms that manage or integrate with peripherals/devices such as scanners, readers, imaging devices, kiosks, or other edge hardware
  • Experience with Nomad/Consul/Vault specifically in production
  • Experience architecting systems with zero/low downtime upgrade paths
  • Experience with semantic, cognitive, or advanced search use cases on Elasticsearch
  • Familiarity with event replay, reconciliation, and offline-sync patterns
  • Experience working closely with field engineering or remote deployment teams
  • Experience with large-scale modernization of legacy monoliths to service-oriented or microservices-based platforms
  • Familiarity with open-source biometric, matching, search, or image processing components
  • Experience with multilingual/internationalized systems deployed across multiple countries or regions
  • Experience supporting operational analytics/reporting services built on transaction/event data
  • Experience with CI/CD pipelines and release discipline for multi-service distributed systems

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY (EEO) STATEMENT

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