Staff Catalyst Engineer

Orbis is seeking a Staff Catalyst Engineer to define architecture across a feature area or entire subsystem of Catalyst - our secure, multi-cluster service mesh platform - and set the patterns that other engineers follow. You will own the technical roadmap for your area, whether that is the event-driven control plane, the proxy-based data plane, the policy authorization system, or the federation and peering layer. This is a high-impact role for someone who has shaped platform architecture and wants to set technical direction for a team building critical infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Define architecture across multiple feature areas or subsystems; set patterns and standards that other engineers follow
• Own the technical roadmap for your area; make build-vs-integrate decisions for platform capabilities
• Drive reliability strategy: define SLOs/SLAs, lead incident response for critical cross-component issues, and architect for resilience
• Define QA philosophy and test pyramid strategy for your product area; own quality gates in the deployment pipeline
• Translate multi-source insight - operational data, customer feedback, competitive landscape - into architectural and roadmap decisions
• Define AI tooling strategy for your area; own agentic workflow architecture and make build-vs-integrate decisions for AI-assisted features
• Grow team capability through deliberate coaching; mentor senior engineers toward staff-level thinking

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience with a track record of shaping platform or infrastructure areas, not just features
• Comprehensive understanding of service mesh platform architecture: management plane (control plane orchestrator, token service, policy engine, observability) and data plane (proxy, DNS); deep knowledge of the separation of concerns between planes
• Ability to explain how BGP's design principles inform multi-cluster mesh federation across all key dimensions: autonomous systems as cluster nodes, route advertisements as service registrations, path arrays for loop prevention, full table sync on session establishment, delta updates, keepalive/hold timers, encrypted RPC session transport, and where the analogy breaks down
• Thorough understanding of worker thread architectures that isolate I/O from a main event loop: dedicated threads for peer connection management (using state machine frameworks), atomic filesystem-based configuration writers, and DNS zone generators - each following entry point / logic / pure builder patterns
• Complete understanding of certificate-bound token services: ECDSA P-384 (ES384) signing, certificate thumbprint binding (RFC 8705), stateless architectures, JWKS endpoints, and per-service token scoping
• Ability to articulate the tradeoffs between authorization model generations: application-layer per-RPC JWT auth vs. network-layer per-request mTLS-based policy enforcement across dimensions of scope, granularity, principal identity, deployment topology, and fault impact
• Has set technical direction others followed and can point to a platform subsystem and explain what they built and what they'd do differently
• Applicants must include a link to their GitHub profile within their resume, demonstrating relevant code repositories, projects, and contributions that reflect their technical experience and capabilities.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. government security clearance

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing or extending event-sourced or journal-backed state systems with crash recovery and deterministic replay
• Track record of defining team norms, working agreements, and communication standards that improve delivery velocity and quality
• Experience leading hiring for senior and staff-level infrastructure or platform roles
• Experience advising leadership on platform capability investments and the evolving role of AI in infrastructure development
• Background in national security, intelligence, or defense environments with direct understanding of mission-critical operational requirements
• Active security clearance (Secret or above); Top Secret preferred
• Willingness to travel 10-20% for customer engagement, architecture reviews, or team collaboration

Physical Requirements

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Routine video conference and/or in-person meetings.
• Ability to attend planned meetings within the Washington Metro Area region.
• Up to 10-20% domestic and international travel required

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.