Software Engineer IV

Kentro is a technology company supporting federal missions through innovative modernization and collaboration. The company is seeking a Software Engineer IV to serve as the principal engineering authority for the FAA ATLAS program, leading complex application, database, cloud, and DevSecOps modernization initiatives. The role establishes engineering standards, leads cross-functional teams, resolves implementation challenges, and drives adoption of scalable modernization practices and emerging technologies.

Responsibilities:

• Serve as principal engineering authority for implementation of complex system development, re-architecture, and modernization initiatives across assigned portfolio segments
• Own end-to-end engineering realization of approved architectures for high-complexity systems, including application design, data access, integration implementation, performance, resilience, and security controls
• Resolve the engineering implementation challenges that block delivery — legacy interdependencies, undocumented data models, migration sequencing, and availability constraints on systems that cannot go down — and elevate material architecture decisions through the program architecture governance process
• Conduct deep technical assessments of legacy applications and databases and provide engineering feasibility, complexity, and migration inputs to portfolio rationalization and disposition decisions
• Lead cross-functional technical teams spanning development, data engineering, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and test
• Provide technical mentorship, design review, and code review to engineers at all levels
• Translate program objectives into executable technical roadmaps, and translate technical risk into terms program leadership and the government customer can act on
• Represent engineering implementation concerns in technical exchanges and support architecture review boards and design authority forums with FAA stakeholders
• Define and maintain engineering implementation standards: reference implementations, coding standards, framework conventions, API and integration implementation patterns, test strategy, and code-quality criteria
• Establish and mature DevSecOps practice — CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code, security scanning, and release automation — as repeatable enterprise capability rather than per-project effort
• Build the reusable assets, accelerators, and playbooks that make a modernization factory model work at portfolio scale
• Ensure designs satisfy federal security and compliance obligations, including FISMA, NIST SP 800-53, and applicable FAA and DOT policy
• Evaluate emerging technologies — cloud-native services, intelligent automation, and AI/ML-assisted code transformation — for engineering feasibility, operational impact, and modernization value; provide adoption recommendations to architecture and program leadership
• Prototype and pilot new approaches, then productize what proves out into standard practice across the portfolio
• Drive measurable improvement in delivery velocity, system availability, operating cost, and technical debt reduction

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline
• 8–10 years of progressive software engineering experience, including demonstrated technical leadership on large, complex systems
• Expert-level proficiency in one or more major development stacks, server-side or front-end (e.g., Java/Spring, .NET/C#, Python, Node.js; React, Angular, JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML, CSS)
• Understanding of legacy and modern application architecture (e.g. monolith, n-tier, service oriented, microservice, serverless)
• Deep experience modernizing legacy applications and databases, including monolith decomposition, re-platforming, and data migration on systems carrying significant technical debt
• Hands-on cloud architecture and engineering experience in a major cloud environment (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including cloud-native, containerized, and serverless design (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, or equivalent)
• Demonstrated ownership of engineering implementation for systems with high-availability, performance, and security requirements
• Practical DevSecOps experience: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, and security integrated into the delivery pipeline
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional technical teams and to define standards that other teams adopt
• Strong written and verbal communication, including the ability to brief technical strategy to non-technical executive and government audiences
• Working proficiency in approved AI-assisted development tools for code analysis, refactoring, test generation, and documentation
• US Citizen
• Experience supporting FAA, DOT, or comparable federal civilian modernization programs
• Large-scale database modernization experience (Oracle, SQL Server, or mainframe data stores to cloud-native or open-source targets)
• Familiarity with FAA enterprise architecture, security engineering, and Authority to Operate (ATO) processes
• Experience applying AI/ML or automated code transformation tooling to legacy modernization at scale
• Experience with serverless and event-driven data processing — AWS Lambda or Azure Functions built around streaming and messaging services (Kinesis, Event Hubs, Kafka, SQS/SNS, or equivalent) for ingestion, transformation, and event handling
• Full-stack breadth — able to reason about and work across the full path from user interface through services and data layer to external system integrations, rather than within a single tier
• Hands-on modern front-end experience with React or Angular, built on solid JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML, and CSS fundamentals
• Familiarity with automated testing frameworks across unit, integration, and end-to-end layers (JUnit, pytest, Jest, Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, or equivalent)
• Relevant certifications such as AWS or Azure Solutions Architect Professional, CISSP, or TOGAF
• Prior experience in a modernization factory, delivery center, or platform engineering organization
• Existing FAA suitability determination or transferable federal background investigation strongly preferred