Software Development Manager

Job Description

Job Description

Company Description

Founded in 1989, SOSi is among the largest private, founder-owned technology and services integrators in the defense and government services industry. We deliver tailored solutions, tested leadership, and trusted results to enable national security missions worldwide.

Overview

SOSi is seeking a highly skilled Software Development Manager to join our Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) team. SOSi's Office of the Chief Technology Officer is an internal R&D function building net-new technology products, not delivering against contracts. We're a small, senior team operating with a high degree of autonomy inside a structured guardrails framework. Decisions get made quickly with a model of act and inform over ask and wait.

The engineering organization runs three pods: Application Development, UX, and Infrastructure. You'd lead the largest.

WHY THIS ROLE EXISTS

This is a foundational hire for the engineering organization. The AppDev pod is the core of the product engine, and this role sets the technical standard for what we build and how we build it. You'll report to the Director of Engineering and operate with significant autonomy over architecture, delivery, and team culture within clearly defined guardrails.

The team is small and senior. You'll have access to SOSi's private AI infrastructure and compute resources. You'll be leading experienced engineers who expect strong technical leadership and clear direction.

WHAT YOU'LL BUILD

You own backend services, APIs, and application logic end to end across a suite of novel products with real-world impact. Your pod is where most of the product gets made.

Beyond core product delivery, you'll matrix into customer environments to lead next-generation system design and solve high-complexity technical problems that require senior judgment. These are targeted engagements, not long-term embeddings.

Essential Job Duties

• Own technical architecture and implementation decisions for backend services and APIs within OCTO standards.
• Drive XP engineering practices across the pod: pair programming, TDD, continuous integration, and collective code ownership.
• Maintain delivery health, code quality, and production readiness as non-negotiable standards.
• Collaborate as a peer with the UX and Infrastructure pod leads on cross-cutting architecture and integration.
• Contribute to the engineering reuse catalog, designing services and APIs for use across multiple products and programs.
• Manage, coach, and develop a team of senior engineers.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will write and review code regularly.

WHO YOU ARE

You've led senior engineers on product teams that shipped to real users. You've worked in or adjacent to regulated environments and you don't treat compliance as someone else's problem. You're familiar with what production-grade actually means and you hold that bar for your team.

Minimum Requirements

• U.S. citizen, eligible for clearance.
• Eight (8)+ years of software development with meaningful time on product teams, not just delivery or staff augmentation.
• Demonstrated people leadership of senior engineers with accountability for team output and culture
• Strong backend depth in Python, Java, C#, Rust, TypeScript, Swift, Kotlin, or NestJS with full stack familiarity.
• Cloud-native experience: AWS, Azure, or GCP, containerization, CI/CD pipelines.
• Working knowledge of FedRAMP, NIST, and secure development practices
• Experience with or strong belief in XP engineering practices: pair programming, TDD, collective ownership
• Strong experience with AI Code assist tooling as part of a mature engineering workflow

WHAT SETS YOU APART

• You've worked inside a product engineering function in a regulated or federal-adjacent environment.
• You've contributed to or led adoption of XP practices on a real team.
• You've designed APIs and services with reuse across programs or products as an explicit goal.
• You've been part of standing up an engineering culture, not just inheriting one.
• You’ve led adoption of AI that resulted in higher velocity without sacrificing SLAs.

WHY HUNTSVILLE, WHY NOW

Huntsville is a serious engineering market. The defense and aerospace ecosystem here is deep and the cost of living relative to DC or the coasts makes this compensation go significantly further. We're building something durable and we're doing it early. The team is small, the problems are real, and the autonomy is genuine.

Work Environment

• Working conditions are normal for an office environment, with possible remote work options.

Working at SOSi

All interested individuals will receive consideration and will not be discriminated against for any reason.