Staff Software Engineer

About Focus

Focus is a digital services firm dedicated to delivering on projects with impact in the civic tech space. We partner with states and federal agencies—including the Department of State, IRS, and the Department of Education—to transform outdated systems into modern, efficient solutions that deliver better outcomes for citizens.

At Focus, we believe in doing impactful work while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. We encourage our team to log off at the end of the day, take time off when needed, and bring their best selves to work. We are intentional about staying on the cutting edge of our tooling and practices—from modern cloud development environments to integrating AI into our daily workflows—so our engineers spend their time solving hard problems, not fighting dull tools.

We are a fully remote company, and all employees must be based in the continental U.S. Some projects may require occasional travel, approximately 1-2 times per year.

Role Overview

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will operate across the entire technology stack. You will build Playwright automated testing suites, develop Python scripts for dynamic test data setup, design self-service web interfaces in React, and construct automated CI/CD pipelines in AWS. Working in a complex, multi-vendor government ecosystem, you will serve as a technical guide and gatekeeper—helping third-party vendor teams identify bugs, improve release velocity, and transition to modern CI/CD practices.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and maintain scalable end-to-end (E2E) automated UI and API test suites using Playwright and TypeScript across multiple product verticals.
• Design and build automated data generation tools and synthetic applicant profile generators using Python and REST APIs to replace manual data setup processes.
• Develop user-friendly front-end tools in React and TypeScript that enable external vendor teams and government stakeholders to generate test scenarios on demand and monitor pipeline status.
• Construct, maintain, and optimize CI/CD pipelines to support quality gates and feature-driven promotion practices.
• Lead rotating sprint triage efforts to debug system failures across a complex multi-vendor environment, accurately isolating whether issues stem from cloud environment changes, vendor code releases, or test configurations.
• Provide actionable feedback through thorough code reviews and 1:1 mentorship, bake high code quality standards into deliverables, and help set team development patterns.
• Serve as a trusted technical liaison to client leads and external vendor teams, advocating for developer self-service, smooth release gatekeeping, and collaborative troubleshooting.
• Support cloud infrastructure updates using Terraform, embed automated security scanning, and navigate continuous compliance processes in a FedRAMP/Public Trust environment.

Skills & Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience developing full-stack applications and tooling using TypeScript and Python.
• Practical experience writing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and leveraging infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform.
• Experience designing complex systems that interact with multiple external services, databases, and third-party APIs.
• Proven experience working on cross-functional agile teams, estimating complex engineering tasks, and directly communicating technical updates to client stakeholders.
• Strong diagnostic skills for troubleshooting complex, distributed multi-vendor application failures and microservices.
• Prior experience working on federal government digital service projects or civic tech programs.
• Familiarity with AWS GovCloud environments, FedRAMP compliance standards, and observability tooling.
• Experience implementing synthetic test data generators or complex mock data services for enterprise integrations.