Credence Management Solutions is a $500M+, 2,000-employee federal IT services firm, ranked in the Washington Technology Top 100. We position ourselves as an AI-native federal services company under the Credence.ai brand — *Trusted Human Expertise + Secure Agentic AI* — and AI/ML is one of our top technical differentiators alongside DevSecOps, Cloud, Data, and Cybersecurity.
We are growing our practice supporting the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and we have an immediate need for a Principal Solutions Architect to help us build and scale that work. This is a foundational technical hire.
As Principal Solutions Architect, you will own the end-to-end technical architecture for VA IT modernization programs — setting reference architectures, making platform and integration decisions, and validating solutions through delivery. You will partner directly with our VA practice lead (a former Deputy Chief Information Officer at VA) to shape our technical posture with VA customers.
This is a hands-on senior individual contributor role. You are a player-coach: still hands-on with code, reference architectures, and proofs of concept, while also representing Credence technically in customer meetings, capture activity, and strategy discussions. This is not a people-management role today — as the practice grows, you will naturally become the technical center of gravity for the engineers we hire, mentoring by credibility rather than by org chart.
While we scale up the VA practice, you will work from Credence's shared solutions architecture pool, supporting DoD delivery programs alongside your VA-focused capture work. Over time, your focus will shift primarily to VA as our pipeline converts.
Credence runs a flat, empowered capture and delivery culture. Senior technical leaders are active partners in winning work, not just delivering it. You should expect to wear many hats and to spend a meaningful portion of your first 12 months contributing to pre-award activity — technical volumes, oral presentations, RFI responses, and customer discovery.
Salary Range: $180,000.00 to $220,000.00
Job creation date: 2026-04-24 18:10:40.51
Requirements
What You'll Do:
- Own architecture for VA IT programs: reference architectures, integration patterns, platform decisions, and roadmaps — with clear documentation of trade-offs.
- Write proof-of-concept code and hands-on prototypes to de-risk architectural decisions and validate solutions before they reach customers.
- Represent Credence technically to VA stakeholders (OIT, EHRM, VHA) — in RFI responses, oral presentations, and relationship-building touchpoints.
- Contribute to capture strategy for VA opportunities — technical volume authorship, win-theme development, technical Q&A, and customer discovery.
- Provide architectural guidance and technical mentorship to Credence engineering teams as they come into VA delivery work.
- As the practice matures, review and validate solution designs from delivery teams against Credence's architectural standards and VA compliance requirements.
- Partner with our VA practice lead on customer engagements and on positioning Credence's AI-native capabilities for VA modernization.
- Document architectural decisions, integration contracts, and technical standards so engineering teams can execute against them with clarity.
Required Qualifications:
- Citizenship: US Citizen with the ability to obtain a successful Federal Background Investigation.
- Experience: Minimum ten (10) years of hands-on technical experience. Bachelor's in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field; Master's preferred.
- AI/ML. Direct, recent, hands-on experience using AI, Machine Learning, or Generative AI to solve real problems in production systems — not just familiarity. Examples of qualifying work: integrating LLM APIs into production systems, building RAG pipelines, designing MLOps infrastructure, fine-tuning or training models, or architecting agentic AI systems. Candidates without demonstrable AI/ML implementation work will not be considered. AI/ML depth will be evaluated — AI/ML is core to our value proposition to VA.
- Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Experience. Prior experience working at VA — as a VA employee or as a VA contractor — is required. General federal or DoD experience does not substitute.
- Scale: Experience architecting at enterprise scale ($100M+ programs or equivalent complexity — multi-region production cloud, platforms serving tens of thousands of users, or systems integrating 20+ downstream applications) and comfort operating at task-order agility (bidding and delivering smaller task orders with short time-to-delivery).
- Cloud: Deep experience with secure cloud architecture on AWS and/or Azure — service model selection (IaaS, PaaS), networking, identity, and federal cybersecurity controls (FedRAMP, NIST).
- DevSecOps: Deep experience with DevSecOps principles and practices — CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure as code, shift-left security.
- Software Engineering breadth: API design, microservices, containerization, application development, Agile/SDLC.
- Federal Resources Awareness: Familiarity with Federal Government reference architectures and security controls (FedRAMP, NIST 800-53, VA EHRM/OIT standards).
- Technical Leadership: Proven ability to set architectural direction and mentor engineers through technical credibility and hands-on problem-solving.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Healthcare informatics experience — VA, VHA, DoD healthcare.
- DoD program experience (delivery or capture) — our practice supports both VA and DoD customers.
- Experience with application portfolio inventories, application interdependency mapping, and modernization assessments.
- Data analytics, SaaS, Low/No-Code platforms, or RPA.
- Network engineering depth.
Additional Requirements:
- Understanding of Agile, Service-Oriented Architecture, DevOps, Automated Testing and Deployment, Microservices, and Containerization.
- Demonstrated experience designing and de-risking large, complex solutions — preferably in cloud and/or container environments.
Certifications:
- Technical certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect, Azure Solutions Architect, or similar are valued but not required. Non-technical certifications (PMP, ITIL) are not weighted.
Communication & Soft Skills:
- Excellent oral and written communication — comfortable briefing senior VA stakeholders and defending architectural decisions in technical review.
- Critical thinking and the ability to look at problems from multiple angles.
- Comfort with ambiguity and a bias toward action in a fast-moving, capture-driven environment.
Benefits
- Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
- Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
- Life Insurance (Basic, Voluntary & AD&D)
- Paid Time Off (Vacation, Sick & Public Holidays)
- Family Leave (Maternity, Paternity)
- Short Term & Long Term Disability
- Training & Development
- Work From Home
- Free Food & Snacks
- Wellness Resources
Skills Required
- Minimum ten years of hands-on technical experience
- Bachelor's in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
- Direct hands-on experience with AI, Machine Learning, or Generative AI
- Prior experience working with the Department of Veterans Affairs
- Experience architecting at enterprise scale ($100M+ programs)
- Deep experience with secure cloud architecture on AWS and/or Azure
- Deep experience with DevSecOps principles and practices
- Proven ability to set architectural direction and mentor engineers
Credence Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Credence and has not been reviewed or approved by Credence.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is considered competitive or better than average across many roles, with multiple examples describing excellent pay and competitive salaries. Additional cash elements such as bonuses appear alongside base pay.
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Healthcare Strength — Benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, supported by HSAs/FSAs and a TRICARE supplement. Employer-paid life and disability coverage further strengthen the protection package.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time off includes flexible PTO and a broad holiday schedule aligned to federal holidays. Additional leave types such as military and bereavement leave are available.
Credence Insights
What We Do
Credence provides innovative technology, health, international development, engineering, and management solutions to support mission-critical programs for Federal government customers. We are one of the nation’s largest privately held government contractors. Our ability to perform exceptionally to implement new solutions, efficiencies, and savings across 220 U.S. Government programs is due to our obsession with exceeding customer expectations and our emphasis on employee wellbeing—best exemplified by our corporate philosophy: “One Measure of Success. Yours.” WHY WORK WITH CREDENCE? We are consistently rated as a Top Workplace and are proud to be one of the fastest growing privately held firms in the U.S. over the last decade. Credence treats each customer, teaming partner, and employee as a trusted partner whom we serve. We ensure successful outcomes by focusing on the measure of success that we consider to be most important—Yours. WHY WORK FOR CREDENCE? We are a diverse, enthusiastic team of professionals who are dedicated to providing exceptional service to our customers. Our culture is focused on employee empowerment, recognition, and reward, and each person is encouraged to take initiative and strive to reach their greatest potential. HOW CREDENCE GIVES BACK: We believe in giving back to the communities in which we live and work through corporate charitable events, support for employee volunteering, and a 100% corporate match for employee charitable giving.
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