Ruby On Rails Developer Contract Jobs in Ashburn, VA

Agile Six is a people-first, remote-work company that serves shoulder-to-shoulder with federal agencies to find innovative, human-centered solutions. We build better by putting people first. We are animated by our core values of Purpose, Wholeness, Trust, Self-Management and Inclusion. We deliver our solutions in autonomous teams of self-managed professionals (no managers here!) who genuinely care about each other and the work. We know that's our company's purpose - and that we can only achieve it by supporting a culture where people feel valued, self-managed, and love to come to work.
The Role
Agile Six is looking for a Fullstack Software Engineer to join a cross-functional agile team partnered with the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). Our team is partnering with the VA to deliver a seamless and positive experience for any Veteran who wants to digitally schedule or manage an appointment. Our work includes making all appointment-related functionality available in an integrated experience across multiple platforms to ease access to appointment management activities including appointment preference collection, travel reimbursement, follow on scheduling, notifications, pre-appointment workflows, and after-visit summaries. The goal is that a Veteran should have an easy and intuitive experience for all activities related to their appointment.
The ideal candidate will be capable and proficient across the tech stack, including Ruby on Rails on the backend and React and Javascript on the front end. The ideal candidate is patient, curious, proactive, and positive; someone who understands the large impact that even small changes can have on end users, someone able to learn a complex landscape and innovate, someone who constantly seizes opportunities to refine, and someone who is dedicated to accessibility and championing the impact of our work. Most importantly, someone with a passion for working on important problems that have a lasting impact on millions of users and make a difference in our government.
The Period of Performance for this contract expires on February 16, 2027. There is a strong likelihood we will continue this work under a follow-on contract beyond February 16th, but we won't have clarity on the continuation path until closer to that date.
Responsibilities

• Build components and service APIs, using various frameworks and architectures to thoughtfully integrate features. This is a hands-on coding role.
• Collaborate with teammates and with other teams to identify requirements, solve technical challenges, design effective solutions, troubleshoot production issues, and improve system performance.
• Apply design patterns to support quality decisions and contribute to maintaining standards through code reviews, tools, testing strategies, and metrics.
• Apply your experience to make informed architectural decisions, using design patterns and best practices to maintain quality through code reviews and metrics. Your exposure to diverse systems will help you make effective choices for architecture and scalability, supporting smoother workflows and enhancing the development process.
• Support colleagues through code reviews and pair programming, helping to strengthen their skills and improve code quality.
• Communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical teams to foster a collaborative environment.
• Champion innovative ideas and support others in engaging with new approaches. By sharing context and connecting team members to the broader goals, you'll help address challenges holistically and contribute to meaningful, systemic improvements and make informed trade offs.
• Effectively leverage AI-powered IDEs such Copilot and Cursor to analyze existing code, develop features, write unit tests, and debug issues while retaining responsible oversight and reviewing all work produced.
• Support the practice of engineering within the larger company as needed through activities such as:
  • Assisting in outreach, recruitment, and hiring efforts
  • Occasionally participating in or otherwise supporting business development efforts, including code or design challenges, writing or reviewing proposal responses, etc.
  • Participating in communities of practice
• We expect the responsibilities of this position to shift and grow organically over time, in response to considerations such as the team's needs and strengths, the unique strengths and interests of the selected candidate, and an evolving understanding of the delivery environment.

Basic qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • A relevant Associate's degree will count toward 2 years of experience. A relevant Bachelor's degree will count toward 4 years of experience. A relevant Master's Degree will count toward 6 years of experience.
• Deep experience with modern languages and frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Javascript/Typescript with React, and testing frameworks such as React Testing Library and RSpec
• Experience working with complex architectures across multiple products and business domains, while also building strong expertise in specific areas
• Experience self-organizing: taking ownership of assigning and managing your own work
• Pragmatic decision-making skills and the ability to weigh and navigate tradeoffs
• A strong sense of experimentation, eager to innovate, using hypothesis-driven development
• Solid experience maintaining and refining design and implementation choices over time
• Experience working with a Services Oriented Architecture and integrating with the APIs of other teams
• Experience experimenting with and/or utilizing AI tools and services to create and deliver software, and a willingness to leverage AI where appropriate to improve outcomes
• Thrives in Agile environments, focusing on team success and embodying an Agile mindset throughout work product
• A commitment to documentation and making sure the "institutional knowledge" gets written down.
• Strong sense of ownership and a collaborative mindset. We work in an environment that can require a good deal of communication with other teams.
• Has lived and worked in the United States for 3 out of the last 5 years
• Some of our clients may request or require travel from time to time

Additional desired qualifications

• Familiarity with monitoring tools (e.g. DataDog)
• Familiarity with React Native or other cross-platform mobile frameworks
• Familiarity with the U.S. Web Design System
• Experience working with government agencies
• You are a U.S. Veteran. As a service-disabled veteran-owned small business, we recognize the transition to civilian life can be tricky, and welcome and encourage Veterans to apply.

At Agile Six, we are committed to building teams that represent a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. Even if you don't meet every requirement, we encourage you to apply. We're eager to meet people who believe in our mission and who can contribute to our team in a variety of ways.
Salary and Sixer Benefits
As a small organization and government contractor, the roles we hire for depend on the contracts we hold and the funding available. Salaries at Agile Six are tied to predefined peer groups based on the staffing plans we sell to clients. People in the same peer group are paid within 2.5% of the peer group's salary mean, even when their project work differs.
We post fixed, non-negotiable salaries so that you know what to expect, and to remove the bias and inequity that often show up in salary negotiations. We also periodically raise the salary of all Sixers to keep pace with market conditions.
For more information about our Pay and Equity practices, please contact our Recruitment team.
The salary for this position is $132,464.
Our benefits are designed to reinforce our core values of Wholeness, Self Management and Inclusion. The following benefits are available to all employees. We respect that only you know what balance means for your life and season. While we offer support from coaches, we expect you to own your wholeness, show up for work whole, and go home to your family the same. You will be seen, heard and valued. We expect you to offer the same for your colleagues, be kind (not controlling), be caring (not directive) and ready to participate in a state of flow. We mean it when we say "We build better by putting people first".
All Sixers Enjoy:

• Self-managed work/life balance and flexibility
• Competitive salary
• Employee Stock Ownership (ESOP) for all employees!
• 401K matching
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Employer paid short and long term disability insurance
• Employer paid life insurance
• Self-managed and generous paid time off
• Paid federal holidays and two floating holidays
• Paid parental leave
• Self-managed professional development spending
• Self-managed wellness days

Hiring practices
Agile Six is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any factor protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.
Note: We participate in E-Verify. Upon hire, we will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. Unfortunately, we are unable to sponsor visas at this time.
If you need assistance or reasonable accommodation in applying for any of these positions, please reach out to careers@agile6.com. We want to ensure you have the ability to apply for any position at Agile Six.
Please read and respond to the application questions carefully. Interviews are conducted on a rolling basis until the position has been filled.