Job Overview:We're looking for an engineering leader who stays close to the code, holds a high technical bar, and can translate product priorities into shipped software without losing momentum. You'll manage a team of software engineers, collaborate directly with product management on roadmap execution, and operate as a peer to architecture and platform peers across Exostar's R&D organization.
You will use AI coding tools - Claude Code, GitHub Copilot - yourself, daily. You will model that behavior for your team. AI-native development is not optional at Exostar; it's how we build.
This role reports to the Director, R&D Engineering and operates in Exostar's FedRAMP Moderate / CMMC Level 2 environment serving defense primes including Boeing and BAE Systems.
What You'll OwnEngineering Delivery- Lead a team of software engineers building production features across Exostar's identity, credentialing, and supply chain security platform.
- Own the technical quality of your team's output - architecture decisions, PR reviews, code quality, and production reliability.
- Drive sprint execution: planning, backlog refinement, dependency management, and delivery against committed milestones.
- Identify and resolve blockers before they become delays - escalate when needed but own the outcome.
- Establish and maintain engineering metrics: deployment frequency, change failure rate, cycle time, defect escape rate.
AI-Native Engineering Leadership- Use Claude Code and GitHub Copilot daily in your own workflow - not as optional productivity tools, as standard practice.
- Model AI-native development for your team: code generation, agentic workflows, AI-assisted PR review, and automated testing.
- Drive adoption across your team: coach skeptics, celebrate early adopters, measure impact, and share learnings org-wide.
- Stay current on the AI tooling landscape - surface new tools and workflows to the Director when they're worth evaluating.
Product & Roadmap Collaboration- Partner with product managers to translate roadmap priorities into engineering scope - push back on ambiguity, not on accountability.
- Participate in quarterly planning: capacity estimation, sequencing, and dependency identification across teams.
- Maintain clear line of sight from customer commitments to sprint execution for your team.
- Surface engineering constraints to product early - don't absorb scope silently, negotiate it explicitly.
People Leadership- Build and sustain a strong engineering team by hiring well, developing talent, addressing performance gaps, and making tough decisions when required.
- Lead consistent 1:1 conversation that prioritize coaching, development, and long-term impact.
- Build a team culture of end-to-end ownership: engineers who ship, monitor, and stand behind their systems in production.
- Partner with the Director on career development frameworks and internal promotion pipelines.
Responsibilities-Your day if you join us: Required:- 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years in an engineering leadership capacity managing a team.
- Hands-on daily user of AI coding tools - Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent. You use these yourself, not just advocate for them.
- Comfortable in code: you conduct meaningful PR reviews, write production code when it unblocks the team, and can challenge architecture decisions with technical depth.
- Cloud-native engineering experience on Azure or AWS - microservices, containerization, CI/CD, IaC.
- Strong written and verbal communication - you can write a crisp engineering spec and hold your own in a cross-functional planning session.
- U.S. Citizens only Due to customer requirements, U.S. Citizenship is required. Ability to gain and maintain Trusted Role is required.
Location: Hybrid- Herndon, VA, Cincinnati, OH (3x/week)Preferred Qualifications:You are exactly who we are looking for if you:
- Experience in a FedRAMP, CMMC, HIPAA, or equivalent regulated environment - understanding of how compliance requirements land in the SDLC.
- Azure depth: Entra ID, managed identities, Azure DevOps, Azure Gov familiarity.
- Exostar's primary stack: C#/.NET, Angular, Python, TypeScript, Kubernetes, Terraform.
- IAM, PKI, credentialing, or federated identity domain experience.
- Experience building or operating agentic AI workflows: MCP, multi-tool pipelines, AI-assisted code review or testing.
- Track record of driving AI tooling adoption at team scale - teach-the-trainer models, adoption measurement, coaching skeptics.
- Deep understanding Microsoft Azure PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) offerings such as App Service, Functions, and Azure SQL.
- Hands-on, working knowledge of Java and the Spring framework is required.
