Role overview

TribalScale is a digital innovation firm that partners with organizations to build transformative digital products and apply emerging technologies to business challenges. This Forward Deployed Full Stack Engineer role places you on site with a US government-facing client, working directly with their teams to understand needs and ship production software into secure environments, often within the same week.

Key responsibilities

Embed with the client team on site and remotely to work with end users, product owners, and technical and security staff to understand their workflows firsthand.
Build and ship full stack features across the front end, back end, data layer, and infrastructure, owning each feature from initial conversation through deployment.
Deploy software into on-premises, government cloud, or restricted network environments where standard tooling and internet access may be limited.
Move quickly from ambiguous requirements to working prototypes that you can put in front of users for iterative feedback.
Integrate AI-powered features and agentic workflows where they add genuine value, working within the client’s security and data-handling constraints.
Work within security processes by writing code and documentation that pass security review and partner with the client’s information security and compliance teams.
Serve as TribalScale’s technical presence on site, bringing field insights back to the broader engineering team and coordinating with specialists as needed.

Requirements

Hold an active US Secret clearance (or higher) with the ability to maintain it; US citizenship is required.
Five or more years of professional full stack development experience, shipping production software that real users depend on.
Strong front-end skills in TypeScript and a modern framework, with React preferred.
Strong back-end skills in Python, Node.js, Java, or Go, plus experience designing REST and GraphQL APIs.
Hands-on experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL, including data modeling and query performance optimization.
Practical experience with containers and CI/CD pipelines, including Docker; Kubernetes or OpenShift experience is a strong advantage.
Cloud platform experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP; government-specific regions such as AWS GovCloud or Azure Government are a plus.
Proven ability to work directly with end users or customer stakeholders and explain technical tradeoffs in non-technical language.
Comfort using AI coding tools as part of your daily development practice.
Ability to make progress and sound decisions in the face of incomplete specifications and ambiguous requirements.

What makes this role worth considering

This position offers the opportunity to work on meaningful government challenges while embedded directly with the client team, giving your judgment and technical decisions real impact. You’ll work across the full technology stack in a secure, constrained environment where practical problem-solving and rapid iteration are valued over process overhead, and where you can help shape how AI is applied responsibly within government constraints.