Ad Hoc

Engineer Lead

Ad Hoc$150K — $195K *
Enterprise Technology
11 - 15 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 12+ years of relevant engineering experience and a Master's degree, or equivalent experience without a degree.
  • 2+ years of mentoring or technical leadership experience.
  • Experience in delivering production software, APIs, CI/CD systems, and infrastructure automation.
  • Familiarity with cloud-native platforms, containers, and infrastructure as code.
  • Strong communication skills for technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

  • Shape technical direction of engineering programs with leadership.
  • Coach and develop engineering team members, creating a culture of learning.
  • Serve as a mentor, guiding engineers in technical and career growth.
  • Lead team processes and advocate for best practices in engineering delivery.
  • Translate complex requirements into reusable platform capabilities.

Benefits

  • Company-subsidized health, dental, and vision insurance.
  • Flexible PTO policy.
  • 401K plan with employer matching.
  • Paid parental leave after one year of service.
  • Employee Assistance Program.
Full Job Description
Engineer Lead
This is a remote position.
Job Req #919


The Federal Civilian business unit supports many customers spanning the federal, commercial, and nonprofit space. Our customers include NASA, the General Services Administration, Office of Personnel Management, the Library of Congress, Health & Human Services, and the FDIC. We partner with these agencies to build new capabilities, deliver products, establish data as a strategic asset for informed decision-making, modernize legacy systems, and build the digital service infrastructure necessary to scale their mission impact.

Primary Responsibilities:

As an Engineering Lead, you will be responsible for working with leadership to shape the technical direction of the program, while gaining exposure into people management. An Engineering Lead is a people manager, leader, and mentor with the ability to cross-functionally lead program delivery. You are an emerging subject matter expert that is developing the skills to successfully lead through team members and effectively communicate and execute against program and organizational objectives. In this role, an Engineering Lead will support leadership in partnering with peers to meet delivery requirements.

You will guide the design and delivery of engineering platforms, automation, and AI-enabled services that help IRS teams build, secure, authorize, and release software faster.

The role combines platform engineering, DevOps, developer experience, ATO automation, AI systems, data engineering, and team leadership. A primary goal is to translate complex security, compliance, and operational requirements into reusable platform capabilities rather than requiring each application team to solve them independently.

Primary expectations of an Engineering Lead include:
  • Develops an understanding of program scope, schedule and cost management; with the support of leadership, articulates contractual delivery requirements to team members
  • Provides coaching and development to engineering team members, and works with leadership to define growth goals and development plans, and creates a culture where people can learn and evolve
  • Serves as a mentor, supporting one or two teams' Engineers in technical direction and career management
  • Leads team processes and seeks out best practices to fill gaps
  • Develops collaboration skills to partner with key stakeholders to represent the engineering practice in advocating for the best technical solutions while communicating tradeoffs
  • Development of effective written communication and presentation skills to describe systems, design decisions, and past performance
  • May participate in bid-writing, tech demos, strategic planning, and other client-facing communications
  • Presents program's ongoing engineering work, future goals, and risks
  • Development of influential skills to translate and communicate technical challenges and roadmaps
  • Participates in interviews with new candidates and develops/grades homework
  • Responsible for hiring, performance management, timecard reviews, PTO management and team development
  • Help define the technical direction for internal developer platforms, CI/CD services, engineering automation, and AI-enabled tools.
  • Design reusable platform services, APIs, templates, workflows, and integrations that improve software delivery.
  • Translate ATO, NIST, RMF, and IRS security requirements into automated controls, policy checks, evidence collection, and approval workflows.
  • Develop internal developer platform capabilities using technologies such as Red Hat Developer Hub, Backstage, OpenShift, and GitHub.
  • Create self-service workflows for project onboarding, software requests, access, environments, infrastructure, and deployments.
  • Build and maintain reusable CI/CD workflows using tools such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar platforms.
  • Design and integrate AI solutions, including retrieval-augmented generation chatbots, multi-agent systems, and AI-assisted engineering workflows.
  • Build or support data integrations, data pipelines, metadata services, analytics, and reporting capabilities.
  • Improve the developer experience by simplifying tooling, reducing manual work, and promoting reusable delivery patterns.
  • Lead technical discovery, architecture reviews, demonstrations, planning sessions, and stakeholder discussions.
  • Translate ambiguous requirements into clear technical plans and deliverable engineering work.
  • Mentor engineers, provide technical direction, improve team practices, and support hiring and professional development.
  • Produce clear documentation, training, and operational guidance that supports platform adoption.

Basic Qualifications:
  • Twelve or more years of relevant engineering experience and a masters degree, or equivalent additional experience in lieu of a degree.
  • Two or more years of mentoring, coaching, or technical leadership experience, including coordinating engineering work to support delivery.
  • Must meet federal suitability requirements and pass a background investigation as a condition of employment.
  • Experience designing and delivering production software, APIs, CI/CD systems, engineering platforms, infrastructure automation, or data pipelines.
  • Experience integrating security, compliance, testing, and quality controls into engineering workflows.
  • Experience with cloud-native platforms, containers, infrastructure as code, source control, automated testing, and production operations.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions and tradeoffs to federal and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Ability to work effectively in environments with evolving priorities, incomplete requirements, and multiple organizational dependencies.


Preferred Qualifications:
  • Experience with federal ATO processes, RMF, NIST controls, continuous monitoring, or compliance evidence automation.
  • Experience with Red Hat Developer Hub, Backstage, OpenShift, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins.
  • Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, vector databases, LLM integrations, AI agents, or multi-agent orchestration.
  • Experience with data ingestion, transformation, orchestration, metadata management, analytics, or data governance.
  • Experience with policy as code, software supply-chain security, automated security scanning, or audit evidence collection.
  • Experience integrating GitHub, Jira, identity providers, artifact repositories, security tools, and enterprise systems.
  • General understanding of government contracting requirements and regulations.

To learn more about working at Ad Hoc, please visit:https://adhocteam.us/join

Benefits:
  • Company-subsidized health, dental, and vision insurance
  • Flexible PTO
  • 401K with employer match
  • Paid parental leave after one year of service
  • Employee Assistance Program

In support of various state and city equal pay transparency laws, Ad Hoc job descriptions feature the starting range we reasonably expect to pay to candidates who would join our team with little to no need for training on the responsibilities we've outlined above. Actual compensation is influenced by a wide range of factors including but not limited to skill set, level of experience, and responsibility. The range of starting pay for this role is $150,000-$195,000. Our recruiters will be happy to answer any questions you may have, and we look forward to learning more about your salary requirements.

job reference:

https://adhoc.team/

About Ad Hoc

Ad Hoc is a digital services company that helps government agencies improve the user experience of their digital services. They work with clients across a range of industries, including healthcare, finance, and transportation. Ad Hoc provides a range of services, including user research, design, and development. They are known for their user-centered approach and their ability to deliver high-quality digital services that meet the needs of their clients and their users. Ad Hoc was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Washington, DC.
Learn more about Ad Hoc
Size
200 employees
Industry
Founded
2014

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