Software Engineer, Federal

About the Role

Factory is looking for innovative Software Engineers to join our founding Federal team. You will build and evolve cutting-edge AI systems that transform how government software organizations accelerate their productivity and innovation. You will work directly with the Department of War, the Intelligence Community, and federal civilian agencies to bring Factory to secure, classified, and air-gapped environments, helping the nation's most critical software teams operate as autonomous software factories.

What You Will Do and Achieve

• Innovate at the forefront of AI by designing, developing, and deploying AI-driven agentic systems that enhance Factory's core AI capabilities for federal missions
• Deploy and harden the Factory Platform in secure government environments, including GovCloud, on-premises, classified, and fully air-gapped networks, so it runs with limited or no internet connectivity and with self-hosted or government-approved models
• Build security and compliance into everything you ship, partnering with Security and Infrastructure to achieve and maintain authorizations such as FedRAMP High and DoD Impact Levels (IL5/IL6), including access controls, audit logging, and continuous monitoring
• Build multi-layered guardrails, observability, and explainability into our agents so government users can trust, audit, and understand how an agent reached its output
• Engage directly with federal customers, on-site when needed, to understand their missions and workflows, define requirements with stakeholders, and own delivery from first prototype to accepted production deployment
• Integrate Factory with the tools government engineering teams already rely on, including on-premises source control, CI/CD pipelines, ticketing systems, and DoD software factories
• Work with product, engineering, and Federal go-to-market teams to integrate emerging AI research findings into practical, mission-focused solutions
• Engage in iterative development processes, rapidly prototyping and refining AI functionalities based on real-world feedback to meet the evolving needs of government developers and program offices
• Take the initiative in identifying and addressing product stability and scalability challenges, ensuring the Factory Platform reliably supports large-scale operational demands in high-consequence and resource-constrained environments
• Lead the exploration and integration of large-scale data processing techniques to improve the reliability and effectiveness of our AI systems
• Serve as the voice of the federal customer, bringing field insights back into Factory's core platform so that capabilities built for one mission become reusable across the public sector
• Help build our Federal team from the ground up, partnering with leadership on technical proposals, capture strategy, and the product roadmap for our public sector business

Qualifications

• 2+ years of hands-on experience in software engineering roles post-acquisition of a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, AI, or a related technical field.
• Demonstrated proficiency with LLMs and a track record of applying AI/ML techniques to solve complex, unstructured problems, ideally within the domain of software engineering or related areas.
• Self-motivated and autonomous, with a proven ability to navigate ambiguous projects from conception to impactful deployment, ideally as part of a founding team, a new initiative, or a forward-deployed engineering group.
• Strong communication skills that enable you to articulate technical concepts and strategies clearly at all levels, including to non-technical government stakeholders, coupled with a strategic mindset oriented towards innovation.
• Comfort working directly with customers, including time on-site at customer locations.
• A passion for public sector work and a belief in the potential of government institutions to deliver better outcomes through technology.
• Experience deploying software in regulated or secure environments (e.g., AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, FedRAMP, DoD Impact Levels, or classified and air-gapped networks) is highly desirable, though not mandatory.
• Familiarity with government work and its complexities, including procurement, compliance, and the accreditation (ATO) process, is a plus.
• Experience with data-intensive applications and familiarity with the software development lifecycle are highly desirable, though not mandatory.

Location

We offer location flexibility for this role, with a preference for candidates based in our San Francisco, CA (HQ) or Washington, D.C. (remote).