GDS Lead Engineer

Who We Are:

Headquartered in Washington, DC, Versar Global Solutions provides full mission lifecycle solutions for challenges faced by our government and commercial Customers in the natural, built, and digital environments. With nearly 2,000 team members around the world, and a rich legacy spanning more than 70 years, Versar Global Solutions delivers a broad array of planning, analysis and risk management solutions, project and program management, operations and maintenance services, and information technology applications for environmental management and remediation projects, mission critical facilities and installations, and in support of readiness and contingency operations.

Who You Are:

You are a hands-on Technical Lead with experience designing, building, and operating modern, cloud-native systems across the full application stack. You combine strong software engineering fundamentals with ownership of technical direction, architecture, implementation, and delivery, guiding teams toward scalable, secure, and maintainable solutions grounded in industry best practices and proven approaches adapted to complex, real-world environments.

You bring a broad but practical range of experience spanning backend development, data engineering and analytics, data governance, cloud infrastructure, networking, and AI-enabled systems. You understand how to evaluate open-source, commercial, and standards-based technologies, make informed tradeoffs, and lead their deployment within larger enterprise environments. You are comfortable working across domains, rapidly learning new tools, and prioritizing contributions across multiple concurrent initiatives.

You are known as a pragmatic, "get-it-done" technical leader who thrives in fast-moving, multidisciplinary environments. You balance hands-on individual contributions with architecture decision-making, mentorship, and clear communication in both technical and business contexts, carrying initiatives from concept through production.

What You'll Do:

Technical Architecture

• Own technical direction and system architecture across assigned initiatives, including interface design, technology selection, and long-term maintainability.
• Author, review, and approve architecture and design documentation, clearly articulating tradeoffs across performance, cost, scalability, and operational risk.

Project Management

• Lead technical planning and requirements investigation, translating business objectives into scoped technical work, delivery plans, estimates, and sequencing.
• Support agile delivery practices including sprint planning, prioritization, dependency management, and risk tracking while communicating progress and tradeoffs to stakeholders.

Software Engineering

• Design, implement, and review backend services, APIs, and application components using modern, cloud-native development practices.
• Establish and uphold standards for code quality, testing, documentation, observability, and operational reliability through hands-on contribution and review.

Data & AI / ML Engineering

• Design and implement batch and streaming data pipelines, analytics workflows, and visualization layers to enable timely, data-driven decision-making.
• Lead the integration of AI- and ML-enabled capabilities into production systems with a focus on reliability, interpretability, cost efficiency, and operational readiness.

Security & Data Governance

• Author System Security Plans and oversee design and implementation to meet organizational, federal, state, and customer security, privacy, and data governance requirements.
• Contribute to reference documentation, best practices, and standards for security, privacy, and data governance across bespoke products and internal enterprise systems.
• Ensure timely remediation of security vulnerabilities, failed compliance reviews, and alignment with evolving industry best practices.

What You'll Bring:

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field or equivalent experience
• At least 5-years of professional experience in software development
• At least 3-years of professional experience in managerial roles

Core Strengths

• Full-stack software development using modern Python- and TypeScript-based stacks.
• Design and implementation of data architectures, backend APIs, services, and data pipelines.
• Technical ownership of architecture decisions, development lifecycles, and long-term system maintainability.
• AI and ML engineering with a focus on deployment to production systems.
• Batch and real-time data processing, analytics, and data governance.
• Cloud-native, containerized systems using declarative infrastructure-as-code.
• Strong fundamentals in networking, distributed systems, performance analysis, debugging, security, and data governance.
• Ability to evaluate, adopt, and integrate open-source, commercial, and unfamiliar technologies.
• Clear technical and business communication, mentorship, and cross-team collaboration.

Technical Skills

• Programming & Frameworks
• Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Bash
• Backend: Node.js, NestJS, FastAPI, Flask
• Frontend: React, Next.js, basic D3.js, map-based visualization libraries
• APIs: REST, WebSockets, Server-Sent Events (SSE), event-driven and asynchronous services
• Data & Infrastructure
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB
• Data Tools: Pandas, DuckDB, schema design, batch and streaming ETL/ELT pipelines
• Streaming & Queues: Redis, Kafka (introductory), pub/sub and event-driven architecture
• Containers & DevOps: Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, GitHub Actions
• Data Governance: Schema management, data lineage, data-based access control, auditing, and standards compliance
• AI & Intelligent Systems
• Practical use of LLMs, embeddings, and RAG pipelines
• Integration of open-source and hosted models (LLaMA-family, CV, HuggingFace)
• Orchestration of AI services via APIs
• Model evaluation, prompt design, and latency- and cost-aware usage
• Cloud & Networking
• Cloud Platforms: AWS and Azure (developer and solution-architecture levels)
• Networking fundamentals: HTTP, TCP/IP, load balancing, service-to-service communication
• Metrics, logging, monitoring, and incident management
• Security fundamentals including access control, secrets management, and data protection
• Visualization & Geospatial (Working Knowledge)
• Data dashboards and operational visualizations
• Mapping and geospatial libraries (Mapbox, Leaflet, Cesium)
• Transforming complex data into actionable visual insights
• Project Management & Communication
• Technical writing: architecture documentation, design proposals, operational handbooks, and development standards
• Translating business requirements into technical requirements, estimates, costs, and constraints
• Communicating effectively with technical, business, executive, and customer stakeholders
• Lean development principles, DevOps / DevSecOps, Agile delivery, and IT service management

Compensation

Expected Salary: $140,000 to $155,000 Annually

Versar Global Solutions is providing the compensation range and general description of other compensation and benefits that the Company in good faith believes it might pay and/or offer for this position based on the successful applicant's education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities in addition to internal equity and geographic location. The Company reserves the right to ultimately pay more or less than the posted range and offer additional benefits and other compensation, depending on circumstances not related to an applicant's status protected by local, state, or federal law.

Location Requirements

The position will primarily work a hybrid schedule with some days onsite at Versar Newport News in Virginia.

EEO Commitment

Versar Global Solutions is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Versar Global Solutions complies with applicable state and local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the company operates. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.

Versar Global Solutions expressly prohibits any form of unlawful employee harassment based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran. Improper interference with the ability of Versar Global Solutions employees to perform their job duties is not tolerated.