Why do you need to choose between doing important work and having a fulfilling life? At Ardent, we have both. Ardent employees are committed to solving our customers’ most difficult problems—and we are committed to the well-being, personal goals, and professional development of our employees. We are “All In.” We put forth our strongest effort possible to get the mission accomplished and we do it together. We respect the skills and experience you bring to the Ardent team. And we provide a rewarding environment to help you succeed. 

We offer highly competitive benefits, professional development opportunities, and an exceptional culture that embraces flexibility, innovation, collaboration, and career growth. A collective service mindset underpins our work, and a shared camaraderie to serve clients, colleagues, and our communities sets us apart. Our full commitment to being "All In" for our employees and our clients is not just our approach, it is our standard. If this sounds like the perfect fit for you, choose Ardent and make a difference with us. 


Ardent is seeking a Lead Developer to join our team.  

This is an onsite position located in Tysons, VA. Remote work is subject to the discretion/needs of the customer.

Position Description:

Ardent is seeking an experienced Lead Developer to join our team, specializing in delivering cutting-edge software solutions for federal agencies. In this role, you will lead a technical team in the design, development, and implementation of secure, scalable systems that comply with government regulations.

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in full-stack development and experience working within government contracting. You will be responsible for managing cross-functional teams, ensuring project delivery from concept to completion, and maintaining high-quality standards that meet both client and organizational needs.

Responsibilities and Duties:

  • The Lead Developer shall have the overall responsibility of overseeing the delivery of application code and ensuring that the code developed complies with business requirements, DHS Enterprise Architecture standards, security controls, and clean code standards and strategy.
  • The Lead Developer serves as a mentor to the junior and senior developers and assists in removing blockers and resolving issues with application code. 

Requirements: 

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field with eight (8) or more years of relevant experience in an Enterprise IT environment
  • OR No Bachelor’s Degree with ten (10) or more years of relevant experience in an Enterprise IT environment.
  • Experienced in software development languages and frameworks (such as, but not limited to, MuleSoft, Java, Angular, and microservices).
  • Extensive experience with JBoss Developer (RHCJD) or Oracle Certified Professional, Java Enterprise Edition (EE).
  • Extensive experience with Oracle Database 12c (or greater).
  • Proven success as a technical team leader.
  • Experience with portable environment creation or containerization technologies, such as Docker, Apache Mesos, or Vagrant
  • Experience designing and developing solutions with Java Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) in an Agile Software Development environment.
  • Experience designing and developing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with Representation State Transfer (REST), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).
  • Experience implementing the MVC Development Methodology (Model/View/Controller).

Preferred Requirements:

  • Experience working closely with senior stakeholders to understand business requirements and help translate these into technical requirements for the development team.
  • Experience planning and documenting technical specifications for features or system design.
  • Experience designing, building, and configuring applications to meet business process and application requirements.
  • Experience directing the development team in the design, development, coding, testing, and debugging of applications.
  • Experience writing testable, scalable, and efficient code and leading code reviews.
  • Experience mentoring junior team members and ensuring they adhere to determining software quality standards.

Due to the nature of the work we support, all candidates in consideration for this role must be willing to undergo the government-issued background investigation process.


Ardent is an equal-opportunity employer. We will not discriminate and will take affirmative action measures to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

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