Everything Engineer (Backend Focus)

Redhorse transforms the way government uses data and technology. To support this mission, we are seeking an Everything Engineers with a Backend focus to modernize a mission-critical legacy system managing billions of dollars in international security cooperation.

The Project

We’re working to modernize a mission-critical legacy system that manages foreign military sales cases for the U.S. government. It’s the system of record behind billions of dollars in international security cooperation. The legacy platform is a decades-old fat-client application with hundreds of screens, millions of lines of Java code, hundreds of thousands of lines of stored-procedure logic, hundreds of reports, and a ton of batch processing. It works. But we can do better for an important national security mission.

Our job is pretty straight forward. Out with the old, in with the new. We’re going to replace the legacy system with a modern web platform that does all the things; from a functional perspective, a technical perspective, and a compliance perspective. And we’re going to make it happen through quick iterations, built on an Agentic AI Software Development Lifecycle.

How we build (read this before applying)

AI-led development isn’t a novelty act, its just how software is built. Full stop. Every engineer on this team works through agentic toolkits, Codex/Claude Code/etc. Every day. On production code. Our engineering harness (versioned rules, skills, and specs that guide both humans and agents) is a first-class product with its own backlog. We measure ourselves on shipped, verified capability, not lines typed.

What that means in practice:

• You’ll decompose problems into specs precise enough that an agent can implement them directly and concretely, and you’ll own everything you merge, because agent output is your output.
• You’ll review rigorously. The bar is production software for a regulated federal financial system: test-driven development, human review on every merge, and a rigorous CI scans.
• You’ll ship constantly. Small reviewable changes, an always-green main branch, an always-on beta environment stakeholders can touch.
• You get to play with all the latest cool tech as part of your job.

If you think of AI-led development as vibe-coding, or some fad you tolerate between “real” coding sessions, this isn’t your team. If you’ve hand rolled enough code to appreciate how Agentic AI outsources all the tedious bits and lets you build anything, let’s talk.

What “Everything Engineer” means

Everybody builds across the whole stack (UI, API, database, infrastructure, pipeline) because our unit of work is a complete vertical slice of business capability, not a layer. You’ll have genuine breadth: you can stand up infrastructure, debug a pipeline, reason about security controls, and hold your own in any layer of the system. And you’ll have real depth in your focus area, where you set the technical bar for the team.

Your focus: Backend

You’ll own the heart of the rebuild: the domain model and services that replace decades of accumulated business logic.

• Domain services in TypeScript/Node behind a REST API: case lifecycle state machines, document generation, pricing and payment-schedule calculation engines, workflow and milestone logic.
• Business-rule archaeology. The legacy system’s rules live smeared across converted Java, PL/SQL packages, and database triggers. You’ll help extract them into an evidence-cited knowledge base, then reimplement them with tests that prove parity, including golden-master harnesses that replay legacy calculations and diff results to the penny.
• Financial-grade correctness. Append-only audit trails, segregation-of-duties enforcement, reproducible calculations, and interface controls. This system faces federal financial audit standards, and we build that in rather than bolting it on.
• External interfaces. Rebuilding file-based and API integrations with a dozen partner systems (logistics, accounting/ERP, training management), contract-first, with emulators before live connections.

Who thrives here

• Deep, wide technical background. You’ve written a lot of code for web-based systems, and you understand the whole ecosystem it lives in: cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, networking, security, not just the application layer. When something breaks two layers below your code, you follow it down.
• Agent-native. Real, hands-on mileage with Codex and/or Claude Code (or equivalent) on codebases that matter. You have opinions about specs, context, and harness design based on your experiences.
• A tinkerer. Intellectually curious, pulls threads, wants to understand why the legacy trigger cascades the way it does before replacing it. You build quality solutions because you actually understand the problem.
• Generous. You share information by default: docs, demos, pairing, better harness rules for everyone. You put the success of the team ahead of your individual success.
• Good to break bread with. We’re a small team on a challenging mission.

The Stack

TypeScript end to end. Node with a REST API. PostgreSQL with Prisma. React front end. Temporal workflows. AWS GovCloud, defined in AWS CDK (TypeScript). GitHub and GitHub Actions CI. Vitest and Playwright. Codex and/or Claude Code (or equivalent) with a versioned team harness. Slack and Jira. Everything gets wrapped in containers and pushed to EKS or ECS. On the legacy side you’ll deal with: Oracle 19c, PL/SQL, converted-Forté Java, Cognos, Control-M.

Requirements

• US citizenship and eligibility for a US SECRET clearance
• 7+ years building and operating production web systems
• Mentors the mid deliberately
• Strong track record building production web systems, with demonstrable depth in server-side and domain-model work
• Hands-on experience with agentic AI development tools (Codex and/or Claude Code, or equivalent) on real codebases
• Fluency across the ecosystem: cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, and security fundamentals
• Travel no more than once per quarter

Desired Experience

Ability to read PL/SQL and legacy Java (you’ll be doing archaeology, not just greenfield work); experience with financial calculation engines, audit- or compliance-sensitive systems, or complex state machines.

Nice to have:
Prior work in a regulated or government environment (FedRAMP, RMF, IL-anything); REST API design at scale; Oracle-to-Postgres migration scars.