About the team
USATII develops and deploys enterprise software for organizations managing complex, mission-critical operations. Our engineering teams work directly with customers to understand operational requirements, build integrated systems, and maintain responsibility for the software throughout its production lifecycle.
Our Federal Engineering team combines forward-deployed software engineers, platform architects, infrastructure specialists, cybersecurity professionals, and government delivery personnel to implement software in demanding federal environments.
DART is USATII's enterprise deployment and workforce management platform. It unifies personnel qualifications, professional development, training, workforce readiness, incident staffing, deployment operations, and historical reporting within a single operational system.
We are building a team of engineers who can move between customer discovery, application development, systems integration, and production operations. Our approach gives engineers substantial ownership over the software they develop and direct exposure to the people who rely on it.
About the role
USATII is seeking Forward Deployed Software Engineers to develop, implement, and extend DART for federal government customers.
You will work directly with government program personnel, incident workforce managers, training administrators, qualification reviewers, and technical stakeholders to understand complex operational requirements and translate them into production software.
An initial area of focus is the potential modernization of FEMA's legacy Deployment Tracking System, for which USATII has submitted a Sources Sought response. The prospective implementation would involve configuring and extending DART's existing capabilities, integrating government data systems, migrating historical workforce records, and supporting deployment into an authorized federal environment. No contract award has been made.
You will build across DART's application stack, including its Next.js and React interfaces, Node.js services, PostgreSQL data models, authorization systems, and asynchronous processing infrastructure.
This is a hands-on, customer-facing engineering role. You will investigate operational problems alongside the people experiencing them, design appropriate solutions, implement those solutions directly, and remain involved through testing, deployment, and production support.
You will collaborate with USATII's Principal Software Architect, Federal Technical Program Manager, integration engineers, and cybersecurity specialists while retaining ownership of substantial application capabilities.
The position is based around federal customer engagement in Washington, DC, with hybrid work arrangements and travel determined by implementation requirements.
In this role, you will:
- Work directly with federal operational personnel to understand workforce readiness, qualification management, training, incident staffing, and deployment procedures, translating approved requirements into functional software.
- Develop and maintain full-stack application capabilities using TypeScript, Next.js, React, Node.js, PostgreSQL, and DART's existing application architecture.
- Own the implementation of substantial product workflows from technical design through production deployment, including database changes, backend services, frontend interfaces, automated tests, and operational documentation.
- Extend DART's personnel qualification functionality, including Position Task Book assignments, versioned qualification requirements, evidence submission, mentorship, independent reviews, qualification decisions, renewals, and revocations.
- Build and configure professional development and training workflows involving course enrollment, prerequisite enforcement, assessments, certification records, training transcripts, and integration with external learning systems.
- Develop personnel availability and readiness capabilities that evaluate qualification status, training requirements, approved availability periods, existing assignments, and agency-defined deployment eligibility rules.
- Implement incident staffing functionality supporting personnel selection, staffing requests, qualification matching, team composition, force packages, approval workflows, and the preservation of selection decisions and their supporting evidence.
- Extend deployment lifecycle capabilities covering deployment requests, approval and issuance, acceptance or decline, travel status, duty-station accountability, extensions, rotations, demobilization, and deployment evaluations.
- Build operational dashboards and analytical tools that enable government stakeholders to evaluate workforce readiness, staffing gaps, qualification coverage, deployment activity, and historical personnel availability.
- Implement historical reporting features that reconstruct workforce conditions at previous points in time, including daily personnel counts, period averages, and historical qualification or deployment status, while accurately handling incomplete or corrected source records.
- Work with integration engineers to connect DART with authorized government identity, personnel, training, incident, and resource-management systems through documented APIs and controlled data-exchange workflows.
- Develop reliable asynchronous processing for notifications, bulk record updates, data imports, reporting jobs, and other operations that must remain dependable during periods of elevated system activity.
- Implement and maintain application-level security controls, including role-based access restrictions, separation of duties, record-level authorization, protected data exports, administrative permissions, and auditable operational decisions.
- Collaborate with federal cybersecurity personnel to remediate application security findings, implement approved control requirements, and produce technical evidence supporting security assessments and authorization activities.
- Develop automated unit, integration, and end-to-end tests that verify complex business rules, authorization boundaries, state transitions, historical data integrity, and operational edge cases.
- Investigate and resolve difficult application defects involving concurrency, inconsistent records, database performance, external integrations, authorization failures, or incomplete operational workflows.
- Participate in customer acceptance testing, deployment rehearsals, production releases, performance evaluations, and incident investigations, taking direct responsibility for the reliability of software you develop.
- Identify recurring requirements across federal deployments and contribute reusable capabilities to DART's core platform, including configurable workflows, common interfaces, validation mechanisms, and administrative tools.
- Collaborate with product and engineering leadership to evaluate technical trade-offs, refine implementation estimates, prioritize development work, and continuously improve software quality.
You might thrive in this role if you:
- Have 4+ years of professional software engineering experience developing and operating production applications, or equivalent substantial experience demonstrating comparable technical responsibility.
- Are proficient in TypeScript or JavaScript and have strong experience with React, Node.js, relational databases, and modern full-stack application development.
- Can independently build and deliver features spanning frontend interfaces, backend business logic, APIs, database schemas, and automated testing.
- Understand PostgreSQL, SQL query optimization, transactions, data integrity constraints, database migrations, and the design of complex relational data models.
- Have experience implementing enterprise applications involving workflow automation, approval processes, state transitions, permissions, historical records, or multi-user operational systems.
- Are comfortable working directly with customers, investigating unfamiliar business processes, asking technical questions, and turning incomplete requirements into well-defined implementation plans.
- Have experience integrating third-party systems through REST APIs, authentication protocols, event-driven processing, or asynchronous data pipelines.
- Understand secure application development, including authentication, authorization, least-privilege access, input validation, audit logging, and secure handling of sensitive information.
- Have experience diagnosing application performance problems, investigating production defects, and improving reliability using logs, metrics, profiling, and systematic testing.
- Can write maintainable production code, participate in thoughtful code reviews, and make sound technical decisions without requiring extensive supervision.
- Are comfortable working in environments where operational requirements evolve, implementation priorities change, and engineering decisions must balance reliability, security, and delivery timelines.
- Can communicate technical concepts clearly to engineers, program managers, government stakeholders, and operational users.
- Take responsibility for the behavior of software after it has been deployed and are willing to investigate problems directly with the people affected.
- Enjoy working on substantial engineering problems involving complex business rules, data relationships, operational workflows, and systems that must function reliably under pressure.
- Hold a degree in computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, or a related discipline, or possess equivalent professional experience.
Experience developing or operating federal enterprise software, workforce management systems, emergency management applications, logistics platforms, or personnel administration systems is particularly valuable.
Familiarity with AWS, containerized applications, identity federation, Section 508 accessibility, and NIST SP 800-53 security requirements is beneficial. Federal application security work must align with the controls selected for the system and the eventual contractual requirements.
Prior government contracting experience is not required for every candidate. We place substantial value on demonstrated engineering ability, technical judgment, and experience delivering reliable production systems.
About USATII
USATII is a U.S.-based enterprise software engineering company focused on designing, building, and deploying operational software and private AI systems.
We work directly with organizations to understand complex business processes, develop integrated technology solutions, and support those systems throughout their operational lifecycle.
Our approach emphasizes technical ownership, direct collaboration between engineers and customers, configurable enterprise architectures, and software that organizations can control and sustain over the long term.
USATII is privately held and operates from Rochester, New York, serving commercial and prospective public-sector customers.
USATII is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants without regard to legally protected characteristics. Reasonable accommodations are available during the application process.
Compensation
The proposed base salary for this position is $120,000 annually.
Additional compensation, employee benefits, and employment terms will be determined through an approved employment offer and communicated during recruitment.
This position is associated with prospective federal software engineering and implementation activities. Full-time employment is contingent upon contract award, approved program funding, and final staffing requirements.
Candidates may be considered for future federal deployments or other USATII engineering opportunities based on qualifications and organizational needs.
Any customer-specific citizenship, suitability, public-trust determination, security clearance, or work-location requirements will be communicated once established for the applicable engagement. Such requirements depend on the actual duties and government access involved.