Full Stack Engineer / Software Developer (CBP)

About Agile Defense

At Agile Defense we know that action defines the outcome and new challenges require new solutions. That’s why we always look to the future and embrace change with an unmovable spirit and the courage to build for what comes next.

Our vision is to bring adaptive innovation to support our nation's most important missions through the seamless integration of advanced technologies, elite minds, and unparalleled agility—leveraging a foundation of speed, flexibility, and ingenuity to strengthen and protect our nation’s vital interests.

Title: Full Stack Engineer / Software Developer (CBP)

Clearance: Active CBP Background Investigation (CBP BI) and EOD strongly preferred. We can begin processing for candidates who do not hold one.

Citizenship: U.S. Citizenship required

Location: Ashburn, VA - Hybrid

Salary Range: [Pending]

Signing Bonus: $10,000 for candidates with an active CBP BI. Payable after 90 days; standard terms apply.

Travel: Rare, as needed

The Role

U.S. Customs and Border Protection runs continuous operations across more than 300 land, air, and sea ports of entry, plus Border Patrol stations and the Air and Marine Operations Center. The infrastructure behind that work is only half the story. Somebody still has to build the applications and services that run on top of it, and build them so they hold up inside a federal accreditation process rather than in spite of one.

You will design, build, and maintain software across the stack, working alongside cloud engineers, automation specialists, and security staff who own the environment your code runs in. This is a development role, not an infrastructure role. You are writing the application, not standing up the platform underneath it.

Two things are worth knowing before you apply. Security is not a phase that happens after the code works, it is part of what "working" means here, so you will spend real time on things a purely commercial shop might treat as somebody else's job. And this program does not have the luxury of a green field. Some of what you build has to fit around systems that predate the current approach, and pretending otherwise produces software that looks good in a demo and fails in production.

What Success Looks Like

Objective 1: Ship software that survives its first real contact with production

• Code you write passes review without repeated rounds over the same category of issue.


• Features work the way they were specified, and where the specification was wrong, you caught it before users did.


• What you build integrates cleanly with the pipelines and environments the cloud and automation teams maintain, instead of working around them.

⠀Objective 2: Build security in rather than bolt it on

• Common vulnerability classes get caught in your own review, not in a scan somebody else runs later.


• You can explain a security finding in your own code and fix it without waiting to be told exactly what is wrong.


• Secrets, credentials, and sensitive configuration never end up somewhere they should not be, because you built the habit rather than relying on a gate to catch it.

⠀Objective 3: Make the codebase something the next developer can actually work in

• Someone who did not write a piece of code can extend it without reverse engineering your intent first.


• Tests exist for the logic that would be expensive to get wrong, and they catch real regressions rather than just existing.


• Technical debt gets named and tracked instead of quietly accumulating under a working feature.

⠀Objective 4: Get software through federal review without review becoming the project

• Documentation and evidence needed for a security or compliance review come out of your normal development process rather than a separate effort before a deadline.


• You can explain what a change does and why it is safe in terms a non-developer reviewer can act on.

What You Bring

Minimum Qualifications

[Verbatim from the labor category. Required before publishing.]

Preferred Experience

• You have built and shipped production software in a government or highly regulated environment, not only in a commercial setting with fewer constraints.


• You have written code that had to pass a security review, and can describe what you changed because of it.


• You are comfortable across the stack rather than deep in only the frontend or only the backend.


• You have worked inside a CI/CD pipeline as a contributor, not just as someone whose code gets deployed by it.


• You hold an active CBP BI, a fitness determination at another DHS component, or an active DoD clearance. Any of these shortens your start date.


• You have integrated new software with a legacy system you could not replace, and can describe the tradeoffs you made.

A note on timing

We are staffing this program now. If you already hold an active CBP BI and EOD, your start date is short and a $10,000 signing bonus comes with the role, payable after 90 days under standard terms. We would like to talk this week.

If you do not, we can begin processing a CBP BI for you. That takes months rather than weeks, so applying now means joining a pipeline rather than starting immediately. We would rather tell you that up front than have you find out after you apply.

Employee Benefits

Agile's benefits offerings include, dependent upon position, Health Insurance, Life Insurance, Paid Time Off, Holiday Pay, short-term and long-term Disability, Retirement and Learning and Development opportunities as well as other optional benefit elections.

Our Core Values

Employees of Agile Defense are our number one priority, and the importance we place on our culture here is fundamental. Our culture is alive and evolving, but it always stays true to its roots. Here, you are valued as a family member, and we believe that we can accomplish great things together. Agile Defense has been highly successful in the past few years due to our employees and the culture we create together. 

What makes us Agile? We call it the 6Hs, the values that define our culture and guide everything we do. Together, these values infuse vibrancy, integrity, and a tireless work ethic into advancing the most important national security and critical civilian missions. It's how we show up every day. It's who we are.

• Happy - Be Infectious. Happiness multiplies and creates a positive and connected environment where motivation and satisfaction have an outsized effect on everything we do.


• Helpful - Be Supportive. Being helpful is the foundation of teamwork, resulting in a supportive atmosphere where collaboration flourishes, and collective success is celebrated.


• Honest - Be Trustworthy. Honesty serves as our compass, ensuring transparent communication and ethical conduct, essential to who we are and the complex domains we support.


• Humble - Be Grounded. Success is not achieved alone, humility ensures a culture of mutual respect, encouraging open communication, and a willingness to learn from one another and take on any task.


• Hungry - Be Eager. Our hunger for excellence drives an insatiable appetite for innovation and continuous improvement, propelling us forward in the face of new and unprecedented challenges.


• Hustle - Be Driven. Hustle is reflected in our relentless work ethic, where we are each committed to going above and beyond to advance the mission and achieve success.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.