This is a remote position.

We are continuously sourcing for talent while we await anticipated job openings. Candidates who apply to this role understand we may not have an immediate opening and wish to be considered for future opportunities.

Ad Hoc is a technology company that empowers organizations to deliver scalable, impactful digital services. Using modern, agile methods, our team creates products that meet people's needs and transform their experience of government.

Work on things that matter

Our collaborations have shaped some of the defining moments in public-sector service delivery. We've helped build products that connect Veterans to tailored services, help millions access affordable health care, and support important programs like Head Start. As we work with agencies to deliver critical services, we're also changing how the government approaches technology.

Built for a remote life

Our culture, communications, and tools are built for remote work, enabling us to bring together top talent nationwide. At Ad Hoc, remote life empowers our teams to design work environments that fit their lives and that foster flexibility and collaboration to achieve positive outcomes for our customers.

Committed to high expectations and a welcoming culture

Ad Hoc values acceptance, accountability, and humility. We aren't heroes. We learn from our mistakes and improve the process for the next time. We build small, inclusive teams to collaborate closely with our partners to solve the right problems and deliver software that works.

The Veterans Affairs business unit helps transform the VA into a modern digital services organization where Veteran outcomes are at the center of every effort. We partner with the VA to design and deliver seamless user experiences for Veterans, their families and caregivers, and VA employees. By applying better practices in service design, product management, and technology, we enable the VA to increase the use, quality, and reliability of services and decrease the time Veterans spend waiting for outcomes.

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. 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

The Watchtower Team is a specialized SRE team supporting va.gov. We're not your typical SREs. We act as both consultants and hands-on problem solvers, working across multiple teams to improve the reliability, performance, and overall health of the va.gov platform. This is a high-impact role where you'll be directly contributing to the experience of Veterans accessing critical services.

We're looking for a highly skilled and adaptable engineer who can diagnose and resolve complex issues in a large web application. You'll be using your expertise in observability, incident response, and software development to improve the stability and performance of the platform. You'll also collaborate with other engineering teams, providing guidance and support to prevent future issues.

Key Responsibilities:

Troubleshoot and Resolve Production Issues: Diagnose and fix performance bottlenecks, errors, and other issues within the va.gov application (primarily a Ruby on Rails monolith, including Sidekiq background jobs, but familiarity with similar frameworks is valuable).
Observability & Monitoring: Utilize DataDog (and potentially Dynatrace) to monitor application performance, identify anomalies, and proactively address potential problems. Develop and maintain relevant dashboards and alerts.
Incident Response and On-Call Rotation ("The Watch"): Participate in our on-call rotation approximately once per month. Unlike traditional pager-driven on-call, "The Watch" involves reviewing the previous day's alerts and ensuring no silent failures occurred (such as background jobs exhausting without an alternate submission path). During your on-call week, expect to work 2-4 hours each day on the weekend to maintain system reliability.
Code Contributions: Write and review code to improve observability and fix bugs (Ruby on Rails), implement improvements, and maintain internal tools (JavaScript/SvelteKit, and Python).
Consulting & Collaboration: Work closely with other engineering teams to provide guidance on best practices for observability, reliability, and performance. Communicate technical issues clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Process Improvement: Identify and implement improvements to our monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes. Contribute to documentation and runbooks.
Maintain Internal Tools: Contribute to the development and maintenance of a small SvelteKit application used for tracking team metrics and success.

Basic Qualifications:

5+ years of experience as a Software Engineer or Site Reliability Engineer.
3+ years of experience with backend web application development in a production environment. Strong preference for Ruby on Rails experience, but candidates with demonstrable experience in other dynamic languages (e.g., Python/Django/Flask, Node.js/Express, PHP/Laravel) or compiled languages with web frameworks (e.g., Java/Spring, C#/.NET) will be considered.
Experience with Sidekiq or other background job processing framework. If not Sidekiq, experience must be with a comparable system in their chosen language/framework (e.g., Celery for Python).
Proven experience with application performance monitoring (APM) tools, specifically DataDog and/or Dynatrace. Ability to interpret metrics and identify root causes of performance issues.
Demonstrated experience in incident response and troubleshooting complex production issues.
Experience with at least one modern JavaScript framework (React, Angular, Vue, Svelte, etc.).
Excellent communication, collaboration, and consulting skills.
Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.
Experience working within an Agile environment.

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience with vets-api.
Prior experience working within the VA/OCTO environment or any large government software deployment that integrates with multiple legacy services.
Experience with Python for scripting, API interactions, and ETL/data engineering tasks.
General understanding of DevOps concepts (containerization, virtualization, networking).
Familiarity with GitHub Actions.
Experience with the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS).

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

Ad Hoc LLC is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, age, pregnancy, disability, work-related injury, covered veteran status, political ideology, marital status, or any other factor that the law protects from employment discrimination.

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 $135,000 - $145,000. Our recruiters will be happy to answer any questions you may have, and we look forward to learning more about your salary requirements.

Ad Hoc LLC

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