Rise8 builds custom, secure software for government organizations, measuring success by impact: lives saved, time returned, and missions advanced.
We think big, start small, and scale fast with elite teams across product, design, and engineering to drive continuous delivery for critical missions.
We believe customer experience starts with employee experience, so we take care of our employees. Rise8 is where you’ll do the best work of your career—supported by a culture you won’t find anywhere else. We offer competitive pay and benefits, but what sets us apart is our commitment to autonomy, growth, and a culture rooted in kindness, candor, and continuous learning.
Certified as a Great Place to Work®, with 100% of employees saying they love working here, Rise8 is where bold ideas become real capabilities. Where mission meets meaning. And where fewer bad things happen because of bad software.
This role combines deep software engineering experience with strategic leadership, while maintaining oversight of secure IT operations and compliance (NIST SP 800-171 / CMMC). You will guide technical direction, evaluate emerging technologies, and ensure our internal systems and development practices remain secure, scalable, and audit-ready.
- Own the company’s technology strategy and multi-year roadmap.
- Lead R&D efforts, and drive adoption of modern engineering practices.
- Provide senior-level architectural guidance, support complex design decisions, and establish coding, DevSecOps, and cloud platform standards.
- Evaluate and prototype emerging technologies, build reusable accelerators and reference architectures, and partner with Delivery and Cyber leaders to improve the effectiveness and security of our services with technology.
- Oversee secure cloud and IT operations—including identity and access, endpoint management, networking, developer environments, and automation—ensuring these environments meet operational and compliance requirements.
- Serve as the technical owner for NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC implementation: maintain control baselines, ensure audit-ready documentation, support evidence collection, and collaborate on incident response and continuous monitoring.
- Represent the company’s technical direction to clients and partners, contribute to proposals, and act as a senior technical advisor to the CEO and executive team.
- 10+ years of software engineering experience across multiple languages, frameworks, and cloud platforms.
- 5+ years in engineering leadership or architecture roles.
- Strong experience with cloud-native development, DevSecOps, and secure software delivery.
- Hands-on familiarity with secure cloud configuration, identity & access management, and modern endpoint/device management.
- Experience implementing or operating NIST SP 800-171 / CMMC or similar federal compliance frameworks.
- Broad systems, networking, and cloud security fundamentals.
- Excellent communication skills and ability to guide teams and influence executive decision-making.
- Ability to obtain a U.S. security clearance is a strong plus.
- Prior experience supporting DoD/GovCon environments (NIPR/SIPR familiarity, CAC workflows).
- Experience with Terraform/Ansible or similar automation tooling.
- Exposure to RMF, FedRAMP, or government A&A processes.
- Cloud or security certifications (CISSP, Security+, AWS/Azure Architect).
The annual salary range for this role as it is posted is $190,000 to $240,000 regardless of final candidate location within the United States. The final job level and annual salary will be determined based on the education, qualification, knowledge, skills, ability, and experience of the final candidate(s), and calibrated against relevant market data and internal team equity.
Benefits- Flexible schedule in a 100% distributed workforce
- Premium Insurance: We cover up to 100% of the employee premium and up to 80% of the combined dependent premium on our base health plan, depending on pay band. We also cover 100% of the premium for employee and dependent Dental and Vision as well as employee premiums for Life and Disability coverage.
- Retirement: 401k match at 10% gross pay.
- Paid time off (PTO): 4 weeks combined accrued vacation and sick leave, 11 Federal holidays, your birthday, jury duty, and bereavement.
- Education & Training: Accrued budget of up to $3,500 per year for classes, travel, events, and materials.
- Home Office and Merch: We offer $750 per year for home office technology and equipment as well as $100 per year for Rise8 merch from our Swag Store.
- Wellness Budget: To encourage and support a well-rounded healthy lifestyle, we cover 100% reimbursement on a variety of wellness activities and products, up to $500 per calendar year.
- Rise8 is part of the Life Time Corporate Partner program. In lieu of your $500 annual wellness benefit, you can instead get a $75 monthly credit towards a Life Time membership ($900 annual benefit).
- Equipment: We offer a MacBook Pro
All of Rise8’s work in this area is with Federal Government customers that require our employees involved with their projects be U.S. citizens. As such, this role requires U.S. citizenship. If hired, you would also be required to go through a background investigation.
Rise8 is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer that will consider you for this role regardless of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity or expression, national origin, genetics, age, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
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