Contractual Python Django Developer Jobs in Washington, DC

Python Full Stack Developer
Suitland, MD – 2-3 days/week onsite
TS/SCI clearance is required Stack: Python/Django, React/Next.js, PostgreSQL/Aurora, AWS (multi-partition), Terraform, GitLab CI/CD, Keycloak We are standing up a small, elite development team to deliver cloud-native applications that directly support client operations. This is a focused, high-impact team where every engineer’s contribution is visible and consequential. We are looking for a Full Stack Developer who combines deep Python expertise with genuine frontend craftsmanship, thrive in classified environments, and bring the kind of disciplined engineering mindset that produces secure, maintainable systems under real operational pressure. Required Experience:
• Active TS/SCI clearance
• Python backend development (Django, FastAPI, or equivalent; async/ASGI; modern Python 3.13+)
• Frontend development with React, Next.js, or equivalent (production UIs, not prototypes)
• RESTful API design including BFF patterns and schema validation
• PostgreSQL — schema design, query optimization, migrations, data loading
• AWS — deploying and operating applications across classified partitions and regions
• Terraform for infrastructure-as-code
• Keycloak, OIDC, SAML, or CAC/PIV authentication integration
• Secure application development for STIG-hardened, FIPS-validated environments
• GitLab CI/CD pipelines and Git-based workflows
• DevSecOps scan interpretation and remediation (SAST, DAST, SCA, SBOM, container scanning)
• AI-assisted development tooling in daily practice
• 5+ years of hands-on development (or equivalent demonstrated capability) Preferred Experience:
• Incorporating generative AI capabilities into applications (RAG pipelines, LLM integration, or embedding-based search)
• Migrating legacy systems and data sources into modern cloud-native architectures
• Container orchestration with Kubernetes/EKS and Helm
• Hardened container supply chains and FIPS-validated image pipelines
• NIST 800-53 security controls and their practical application to software design
• Multi-classification or cross-partition deployment architectures
• Familiarity with intelligence community environments and DoD mission systems What You Will Do:
• You will design and deliver complete applications; from database schema to API layer to the interface a mission user opens every morning. The team supports an established platform application while simultaneously standing up pilot solutions and custom MVPs for emerging requirements. On any given week, you might be extending a Django-based API gateway, building a new React dashboard for an operational workflow, writing migration scripts to bring legacy data into a modern PostgreSQL schema, or wiring up Keycloak authentication for a new service.
• This is full stack work in the truest sense. We need engineers who move fluidly between backend logic and frontend polish, who care as much about a clean component hierarchy as they do about a well-indexed query, and who understand that in classified environments, every design decision carries security implications.
• The team deploys across multiple AWS partitions and classification levels. You will work with Terraform for infrastructure, GitLab for source control and CI/CD, and AI-assisted development tooling as a standard part of your workflow — not as an experiment, but as an expectation. Technical requirements:
• Strong Python development is the cornerstone of this role. You should be deeply comfortable with Django or equivalent frameworks, API design patterns including Backend-for-Frontend architectures, Pydantic-driven validation, and async Python in production. This is where the majority of your backend work lives.
• Equally important is your ability to build real frontend experiences. We need developers who can deliver polished, responsive interfaces in React or Next.js. Complete applications with thoughtful component design, effective state management, and the kind of attention to user experience that turns a functional tool into something people actually want to use. If you consider yourself “backend with some frontend,” this role will stretch you.
• You should bring solid relational database skills centered on PostgreSQL, including schema design, performance tuning, and data migration. Experience with Aurora is a plus. You will periodically work with data loading and transformation tasks; bringing structured and unstructured sources into clean, well-modeled relational schemas.
• Familiarity with Keycloak, OIDC, SAML, JWT-based sessions, and certificate-based authentication (CAC/PIV) is important. You should understand how to implement role-based access control and secure token handling in applications where trust boundaries are non-negotiable.
• You need practical AWS experience deploying, operating, and troubleshooting applications across classified partitions. Core services like EKS, Aurora, S3, IAM, VPC, and KMS should be familiar territory. Everything runs in AWS. Infrastructure is managed through Terraform, and you should be comfortable reading, writing, and maintaining modules.
• You should understand secure development practices, secrets management, least-privilege patterns, and the fundamentals of building applications that operate in STIG-hardened, FIPS-validated environments. You will work with DevSecOps scanning outputs across static analysis, dependency scanning, container scanning, and SBOM verification. The platform manages the toolchain; you are responsible for understanding the results and incorporating them into your development cycle.
• AI-assisted development is a required competency. The team leverages these tools extensively for velocity, consistency, and quality. You should already be using them in your daily work and understand both their capabilities and their limitations. The professional qualities that matter as much as the technical ones:
In a team this small, there is nowhere to hide and no room for passive contributors. We need people who take ownership of their code, their commitments, and their mistakes. People who communicate clearly, ask questions early, and push back when something does not make sense.
Attention to detail is critical. When you are writing applications that operate in classified environments, a missed edge case in an auth flow or a carelessly scoped IAM policy has real consequences. We want engineers who are meticulous by nature, not by mandate.
Work ethic matters. This is a small team with significant delivery expectations. We need people who are self-directed, who do not wait to be told what to do next, and who take pride in shipping clean, well-tested, well-documented work.
Familiarity with intelligence community environments and the operational context of DoD mission systems is valuable, though the platform abstracts much of the domain-specific complexity. What matters more is intellectual curiosity about the problem space and the adaptability to work across unfamiliar domains without needing everything spelled out.