Development Lead for O&M

Development Lead- Operations and Maintenance

Work visa sponsorship is not availalbe for this position.

The Development Lead serves as the technical and delivery leader for software development activities within the Operations & Maintenance (O&M) team. This position leads an Agile development team responsible for maintaining, enhancing, modernizing, and supporting mission-critical applications while ensuring development activities follow Agile, DevSecOps, cloud-native, and secure software development best practices.

The Development Lead provides hands-on technical leadership throughout the software development lifecycle, translating business and user requirements into scalable, secure, and maintainable software solutions. The Lead works closely with product owners, architects, cybersecurity professionals, operations teams, database administrators, and other technical stakeholders to deliver reliable software capabilities while continuously improving application performance, maintainability, security, and operational effectiveness.

The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering expertise with demonstrated experience leading development teams in Agile and DevSecOps environments.

How You Will Make an Impact

• Lead the day-to-day technical activities of an Agile software development team supporting application operations, maintenance, enhancements, and modernization.
• Ensure the development team consistently applies Agile development methodologies, engineering standards, and established software development lifecycle practices.
• Analyze business and user requirements and translate them into secure, scalable, maintainable, and technically effective software solutions.
• Provide technical direction, mentoring, code reviews, and engineering guidance to developers while promoting consistent software engineering standards across the team.
• Design, develop, test, integrate, deploy, troubleshoot, and maintain computer applications, APIs, services, and specialized software utilities.
• Develop and modernize cloud-native applications using industry best practices, including modular architectures, containerization, automation, scalability, resiliency, and infrastructure integration.
• Lead development activities within a DevSecOps environment, incorporating automated build, test, security scanning, deployment, and monitoring capabilities into CI/CD pipelines.
• Collaborate with solution architects, cloud engineers, cybersecurity teams, database administrators, operations personnel, product owners, and other stakeholders throughout the development lifecycle.
• Analyze and design application data models and databases and coordinate database development and integration activities when required.
• Establish and maintain coding standards, branching strategies, peer review processes, source control practices, documentation standards, and software configuration management procedures.
• Manage application codebases using disciplined software engineering practices similar to mature open-source projects, including transparent contribution processes, issue tracking, version control, reusable components, automated testing, and comprehensive technical documentation.
• Identify and resolve complex application defects, performance problems, integration issues, technical debt, and production support issues.
• Support application releases, production deployments, troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions within an O&M environment.
• Partner with the Product Owner and Scrum Master to support backlog refinement, technical estimation, sprint planning, release planning, and prioritization of technical work.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, frameworks, development practices, and automation opportunities that improve application reliability, security, maintainability, and delivery efficiency.What You

Will Need to SucceedEducation and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical discipline. Equivalent combinations of education, professional certifications, and directly relevant experience may be considered.
• 10+ years of software development or software engineering experience, including progressively responsible experience designing, developing, integrating, and maintaining enterprise applications.
• 3+ years of technical leadership, team lead, or senior development experience, preferably leading developers within an Agile environment.
• Demonstrated experience developing and supporting applications using Agile software development methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe.
• Demonstrated experience developing cloud-native or cloud-enabled solutions using modern software architecture and engineering practices.
• Demonstrated experience working within a DevSecOps software delivery environment.
• Experience supporting production applications in an operations and maintenance environment, including troubleshooting, defect resolution, enhancements, releases, and technical debt reduction.
• Experience translating functional and business requirements into technical designs and software solutions.
• Experience collaborating with multidisciplinary technical teams, business stakeholders, product owners, and program leadership.

Technical Skills and Abilities

• Strong understanding of modern software engineering principles, object-oriented development, design patterns, modular architecture, and secure coding practices.
• Proficiency with one or more enterprise programming languages and associated development frameworks, such as Java, C#, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, or comparable technologies.
• Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs, microservices, application integrations, and distributed software solutions.
• Experience developing applications for commercial cloud environments such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
• Understanding of cloud-native technologies and architecture patterns, including containers, microservices, serverless technologies, scalability, resiliency, and automated infrastructure.
• Experience with DevSecOps tools and practices including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, code quality analysis, security scanning, dependency management, and automated deployment.
• Strong working knowledge of source code management platforms and Git-based development workflows, including branching, pull/merge requests, peer code reviews, and release management.
• Experience with relational and/or NoSQL database technologies, data modeling, SQL, database integration, and application data management.
• Understanding of software security principles, vulnerability remediation, dependency management, and secure software development lifecycle practices.
• Experience with automated unit, integration, regression, and application testing practices.
• Ability to analyze complex technical problems, perform root-cause analysis, and develop sustainable corrective solutions rather than temporary fixes.
• Ability to balance new development, operational support, modernization, cybersecurity requirements, and technical debt within an O&M environment.
• Strong technical documentation skills, including the ability to document application architectures, interfaces, development standards, design decisions, deployment procedures, and operational support information.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor developers, facilitate technical discussions, resolve technical disagreements, and establish engineering standards across a development team.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience managing a software codebase using practices commonly associated with mature open-source projects, including documented contribution standards, peer review, reusable components, automated testing, issue tracking, and transparent version management.
• Experience modernizing legacy applications into cloud-native or microservices-based architectures.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code technologies such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or equivalent tools.
• Experience supporting applications within federal government or other highly regulated environments.
• Familiarity with NIST cybersecurity requirements, secure software development frameworks, and federal DevSecOps practices.
• Experience with observability and application performance monitoring technologies, including centralized logging, metrics, dashboards, and alerting.
• Relevant technical or Agile certifications such as AWS, Azure, Scrum, SAFe, DevSecOps, or similar credentials are desirable.

Security Clearance Level:  Ability to pass a finger print based security background check for Public Trust level suitability. .Location: Remote. Some travel may be required.

Timeline: This is a contingent position, expected to start in March 2027.

GDIT IS YOUR PLACE:

• Full-flex work week to own your priorities at work and at home
• 401K with company match
• Comprehensive health and wellness packages
• Internal mobility team dedicated to helping you own your career
• Professional growth opportunities including paid education and certifications
• Cutting-edge technology you can learn from
• Rest and recharge with paid vacation and holidays