VP of Federal Engineering

Department: Innovation

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: Remote (select US states)

Reporting To: Victor Garcia

Compensation: $195,000 - $220,000 / year

Description

• Arizona
• California
• District of Columbia
• Florida
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Illinois
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Montana
• Nevada
• New York
• North Carolina
• Oregon
• South Carolina
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Washington
• Wisconsin

What You’ll Do (Key Responsibilities)

• Build and sustain a high-performing federal delivery engineering organization: Establish and enforce engineering standards, practices, and operational rhythms that make federal delivery predictable and high-quality, including how teams approach CI/CD, automated compliance, infrastructure as code, and testing within client environments. Where Coforma has direct control over tooling, enforce it through systems rather than individual effort. Where the toolchain is agency-controlled, set clear expectations for how our engineers operate within those constraints and advocate for better practices. The benchmark is modern software engineering practice applied to the federal context, not federal delivery norms applied to software engineering. Set the bar for what ships and how, and address quality or velocity failures through structural engineering solutions.
• Lead and develop the federal engineering workforce: Oversee the deployment of 55+ engineers across active contracts, building staffing models, skill development pipelines, and rotation practices that balance contract obligations with engineer sustainability. This includes hiring, developing, and retaining strong engineering talent—setting hiring standards that prioritize engineering fundamentals, modern development practices, and demonstrated technical depth over years of federal contract experience or existing clearances—making clear performance decisions when needed, and shaping a culture defined by how teams communicate, how decisions get made, and how quality gets enforced.
• Partner with the Chief Delivery Officer and PMO on federal delivery execution: Maintain close alignment with the CDO on project health, staffing, and client commitments, ensuring that engineering execution and program management operate as complementary disciplines—this includes establishing shared accountability cadences, escalating delivery risk early, and collaborating on how engineering capacity is deployed across the portfolio.
• Operate as an integrated member of the broader engineering organization: Collaborate with peer leaders in Platform and Product Engineering, Engineering Practice, DevOps/SRE/Security, and AI Enablement to leverage shared infrastructure, contribute to org-wide standards, and avoid duplicating capabilities that exist at the organizational level. Bring modern engineering practices from commercial and open-source ecosystems into federal delivery, and push back when "that's how government does it" is used as a reason to accept lower standards.
• Contribute to business development as a technical authority: Support federal proposals by writing or reviewing technical volumes, validating basis of estimates, and presenting at oral evaluations when called upon—this includes building and maintaining Coforma's rapid prototyping capability, leveraging AI tooling, reusable components, and engineering domain expertise to produce working demonstrations at a pace and quality level that competitors relying on slide decks and staffing plans cannot match.
• Manage engineering as a business function: Track utilization, margins, and delivery economics across the federal portfolio. Maintain visibility into the relationship between engineering decisions and financial outcomes, and present portfolio-level reporting to the Head of Engineering on a regular cadence.

• Engineering
  • Complete onboarding and establish working relationships with the Head of Engineering, CDO, and peer engineering leaders (Platform, Product, Practice, DevSecOps, AI Enablement).
  • Conduct a portfolio tour: meet every project team lead, review active contracts, and assess current delivery health.
  • Assess current engineering practices within each project team (how teams ship, how they test, how they manage compliance artifacts, and how much of that is repeatable vs. dependent on individual knowledge) and document a baseline.
  • Understand the boundary between what Coforma controls and what lives within client environments (toolchains, CI/CD, ATOs). Map where Coforma has leverage to improve engineering practices and where the constraints are agency-driven.
  • Identify where engineering and CDO/PMO handoffs are working and where they're creating friction (staffing, escalation, scope, and delivery accountability).
  • Begin assessing team composition: where the skill gaps are, where the strengths are underutilized, and where current staffing models are creating risk.
    
    
• Business Development
  • Get briefed on the active pipeline, upcoming recompetes, and any proposals in flight.
  • Review recent proposal wins and losses to understand how Coforma's technical narrative has landed with evaluators and where it fell short.
  • Meet the Growth Team leads and understand where a VP of Engineering voice is most needed in the near-term BD calendar.

• Engineering
  • Deliver a portfolio-level assessment to the Head of Engineering: delivery risks, practice gaps, staffing exposure, and team-level maturity with a prioritized remediation plan, not a laundry list.
  • Establish a joint operating rhythm with the CDO which includes a standing cadence for delivery health, risk escalation, and staffing decisions.
  • Draft initial engineering standards focused on the highest-leverage areas first: the practices that are most inconsistent across teams and most likely to cause delivery failures. 
  • Identify the two or three infrastructure, tooling, or talent investments that would have the most impact on delivery velocity and lead time within the first year and present these to the Head of Engineering with clear tradeoffs.
  • Present an initial hiring and talent plan: which roles are critical, what the hiring bar looks like (engineering fundamentals and technical depth over federal pedigree), and what onboarding investment is needed for candidates coming from outside the GovCon ecosystem.
    
    
• Business Development
  • Contribute directly to at least one active proposal by authoring or reviewing a technical volume, validating estimates, or participating in a color team review.
  • Begin standing up a rapid prototyping capability: identify the people, define a lightweight process, and establish what a "demo-ready in 30 days" capture cycle looks like.
  • Work with the Growth and MarComms Teams to sharpen Coforma's competitive technical narrative (i.e., how we articulate what makes our engineering approach different from large primes in full-and-open evaluations).

• Engineering
  • Ship the first set of enforced engineering standards scoped to the areas identified at 60 days, with clear expectations for adoption and accountability for teams that don't meet them.
  • Stand up a utilization and margin tracking view for the federal portfolio and present it to the Head of Engineering. This becomes a standing monthly artifact.
  • Have made at least one critical hiring decision—either a key hire brought in or a search actively underway—that signals the kind of talent Coforma is building toward.
  • Establish a visible, regular engineering leadership presence across the federal portfolio—teams should know who you are, what you expect, and how to escalate.
    
    
• Business Development
  • Participate in at least one oral presentation or technical evaluation.
  • Execute the first rapid prototype or technical demo for an active capture effort (a working demonstration, not a slide deck).
  • Present a year-one BD engagement plan to the Head of Engineering and Growth leadership: which opportunities will need VP-level engineering involvement, how that capacity gets managed alongside delivery obligations, and how the prototyping capability scales.

Who You Are and What You Know (Knowledge and Experience Requirements)

• 15+ years in technical leadership roles, with experience leading engineering organizations of 75+ engineers, or direct experience scaling an engineering organization from 40 to 80+ engineers
• Direct experience winning and delivering work in full-and-open federal competition
• Direct experience delivering software under federal compliance frameworks (NIST, FISMA, FedRAMP) and working knowledge of CPARS, ATO processes, and contract performance obligations
• Track record of building or maturing engineering delivery infrastructure (CI/CD, DevSecOps, infrastructure as code) and driving organization-wide process maturity
• Familiarity with the three major cloud providers (i.e., AWS/GCP/Azure), and deep experience with at least one of them
• Experience partnering with delivery, program management, or PMO leadership—this role requires strong cross-functional coordination with the CDO and PMO
• Experience supporting federal proposals: technical volumes, basis of estimates, and oral presentations to government evaluation panels
• Demonstrated experience managing engineering as a cost center or business unit, including utilization tracking, margin awareness, and delivery economics
• Practical experience integrating AI-assisted development tooling into real engineering workflows under compliance constraints
• Experience building rapid prototyping or technical demonstration capabilities for capture and proposal efforts
• Full-time resident of the contiguous United States (must be legally authorized to work in the US now and in the future without sponsorship)
• Must be able to successfully pass any applicable background and/or security checks to obtain a security clearance, if required by a project

• Experience leading or contributing to a CMMI Level 3 appraisal, or equivalent demonstrated organizational process maturity
• Conference speaking, published technical writing, or other public technical presence
• Prior experience in a federal consulting or professional services environment
• Experience working with disadvantaged small business (SDVOSB, 8(a) companies), or Mentor-Protégé Program participants in the digital services industry

Other

• Internet: Will prioritize and maintain access to strong, reliable internet for the remote nature of our work, except when on vacation or holiday.
• Security: Will keep the highest security practices to ensure privacy and security of Coforma and client information, given the nature of our work, even when on vacation.
• Travel Flexibility: On request and with advanced notice, will attend in-person events such as meetings, workshops, and trainings as assigned for projects that require it.
• Brand Representation: Will represent Coforma professionally and sincerely, modeling our Company Values in all interactions.