Remote Principal Software Engineer (Systems Architect)

About A1M

A1M Solutions is a woman-owned small business driven by the aspiration to provide value to our customers, employees, partners, and community while remaining aligned to our guiding principles of foundational values, deliberate focus, and empathetic connection.

A1M’s mission is to preserve and improve government healthcare programs that are lifelines for underserved people in the United States, including people in poverty, elderly people, members of ethnic and racial minorities, immigrants, and refugees. We look for projects with nation-wide impact at the intersection of policy, data, and user experience design.

Besides building useful and usable digital services, A1M helps teams improve their agile, user-centered design practices – or helps them get started. Our goal is not just to build sustainable public services, but also to leave our teaming partners and customers more skilled and more confident in the future.

Technology Delivery at A1M

A1M Technology Delivery Practice staff meet client and user needs by planning, building, and maintaining solutions that involve programming and scripting. Our practice includes product managers, software engineers, and data analysts. We analyze government client challenges and identify how best to help the client meet their goals, which may involve custom code, low code, and no code approaches.

Technology Delivery Practice staff work in cross-functional, cross-organizational teams with designers and policy subject matter experts. We approach challenges with flexibility, patience, thoughtful communication, and solid best practices in agile product management and development. We value high-trust teams.

About this role

As an A1M Principal Software Engineer (Systems Architect), you shape both strategic and tactical direction for the systems and teams you touch, across contracts and, where relevant, multiple centers, offices, or programs within the Technology Delivery practice. You operate with high autonomy, advocating for the right solutions rather than only the ones requested, and you're trusted to provide thought leadership and expert consultation, not just high quality delivery. You may act as a team lead, contribute fractionally across multiple contracts, or work as a focused individual contributor, but in every mode you're expected to anticipate opportunities and challenges using the breadth of your expertise, and to engage with people managers, practice directors, and leadership to help shape discipline growth, staffing, and organizational strategy.

Specific to this opening

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.

As well, 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

Skills and responsibilities

Technical capabilities

Build and maintain complex, scalable systems across application and/or infrastructure layers, and multiple components or services, across contracts or programs as needed

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, such as to support system integration and data flow

Shape system design and drive architectural decisions, including writing decision documents and creating diagrams that inform strategy beyond a single project

Drive improvements in code quality, testing practices, and development standards across the teams, projects, or contracts

Contribute to robust DevOps practices, including deployment, monitoring, and incident response

Mentor engineers across levels and disciplines, review code and technical designs, and shape team and organizational technical direction

Contribute to robust DevOps practices, including deployment, monitoring, and incident response

Identify gaps in skills, information, or staffing and recommend solutions

Seek out and share new technologies and skills that support project and organizational goals

Lead discussions with internal and external stakeholders, including in exceptionally difficult situations

Communication and collaboration

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

Cross-domain understanding

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

Government domain acumen

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

Accountability and leadership

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)

Business development

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

Discipline and practice development

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

Qualifications

12+ years of relevant professional experience.

Your portfolio or resume should demonstrate

Ability to write high-quality, working, and reusable 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 flexing 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

Preferred

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

Applicant requirements

Our contracts require employees to work from the United States. That includes all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, and all US territories.

A1M employees must have been residents in the United States for 3 of the past 5 years.

Due to tax reasons, A1M employees cannot reside in New York state.

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.

Because A1M employees have access to government data and systems, new hires will need to complete a Public Trust form. Public Trust is a type of background investigation, but it is not a security clearance. Depending on the role, you must complete either the Standard Form 85 (SF85) or 85P (SF85P) questionnaire. You will at the very least get asked questions about where you’ve lived, worked, went to school, military history, police records, and substance use. You’ll also need to have your fingerprints taken.

Our partners primarily work on Eastern Standard Time (EST), and will require flexibility in your hours if you reside outside of EST. We do offer flexibility for non-work-related life responsibilities during the day.

Active participation in client virtual meetings, including being on camera, is an essential function that helps strengthen trust and open communication.

Compensation and benefits

This is a fully remote full-time, permanent position. The salary range for this role is $155,000 – $185,000. This range is set by our contracts and reflects the full range for someone in this position over time, so you may not start at the top of the range.

A1M offers a benefits package that includes:

Medical, dental, and vision coverage

Life insurance, short-term disability, and optional voluntary benefits

401(k) retirement benefits with employer matching

Four weeks of paid time off, seven company holidays, two personal days, and your birthday off

Paid volunteer time

Wellness reimbursements

Budgets to support training, development, travel, and office supply needs

Donations to a nonprofit of your choice upon hire and a few times throughout each year

Interview process

We typically have five rounds of conversations to help ensure every employee we hire is the right addition for us and that we’re the right fit for them. Each interview is about 45–60 minutes long.

A1M Overview - We like to start off by getting to know more about you, how you work, what you are looking for in your next role, and what you’re passionate about. This is your opportunity to ask questions and get a feel for us as A1M. We’ll talk about our mission and vision, and what we hope to accomplish through the business. We’ll also cover some particulars about federal contracting that may affect the timelines of when folks can expect to start. We talk about the type of contracts we have, and how our team tends to work.

Technical Assessment - If our work at A1M broadly matches what you’re looking for, we’ll set up time to get into the nitty-gritty of your technical skills. In this conversation, you’ll meet with one of our managers to walk through one or two projects in-depth that you feel are most relevant to A1M’s work so that we can get an in-depth understanding of your skill set and interests. Please be prepared to speak about one or two projects you feel are most relevant to the work of A1M.

Values Interview - After the technical assessment, we’ll schedule a conversation focused on A1M’s core values. This interview helps us understand how you approach your work, collaborate with others, and align with the way we operate as an organization, including areas like impact, collaboration, relationship management, curiosity, and active listening.

Project Overview - Based on what we’ve learned in our prior conversations, we will match your unique background and goals with the right opportunity. Members of the project team will share the day-to-day of the project to outline its vision, objectives, and team dynamics. This conversation ensures the specific position aligns with your career goals as well as ensuring you’ll be successful on the team.

Offer - At this point, you’ve made it! You'll meet with our leadership to go over the offer letter and have a chance to ask any remaining questions.

Equal employment opportunity

A1M Solutions is building a culturally diverse and pluralistic organization committed to working in a multicultural environment where differences are valued and respected. Women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, and veterans are strongly encouraged to apply.

A1M Solutions is an equal-opportunity employer. Applicants will not be discriminated against because of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, citizenship status, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws.

As a federal contractor and subcontractor, we certify that we do not operate any programs that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.

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