District Partners

Title: Staff Platform Engineer, Connectivity Location: United States Job Description: District Partners is deeply engaged with a growing technology company on a search for a Staff-level engineering leader for one of the most consequential roles on their infrastructure team. The hiring team is in the middle of scaling their delivery model from artisanal to repeatable, and they need a senior technical owner who can design the system that lets them grow without breaking. This role is the architecture and automation backbone behind everything else the team builds. Why You'll Actually Care The infrastructure layer between distributed systems and cloud services is the spine of the product. Today, every new deployment is more work than the last. The customer pipeline over the next 2 years is substantial, and the team is one or two architectural decisions away from being able to install and operate at a fraction of the time it takes today. You would be the engineer who makes that delivery system real: the patterns, the automation, the validation, and the standards that take infrastructure delivery from one-off to standardized. This is not a maintenance role. It is the architecture and tooling that the rest of the team builds and runs against. The Basics A growing technology company operating in a regulated, mission-critical infrastructure space. Engineering operates as a distributed team with a focused capability model. Backed by a track record of secure deployments into sensitive environments. What You'll Be Owning - The end-to-end technical strategy and architecture for the connectivity capability, from edge platforms back to cloud-side termination - The delivery system itself: golden image patterns, declarative configuration, validation routines, and operational handoff standards that let new customer environments come online predictably - The automation backbone (Python, Bash, Ansible-style tooling) that turns manual install work into repeatable pipelines - Secure transit design across customer networks, on-prem appliances, and cloud connectivity endpoints, with Zero-Trust patterns embedded by default - Network observability, link health, configuration drift detection, and the operational telemetry that keeps environments supportable at scale - Cross-team alignment with platform, data, field, and operations stakeholders to translate product priorities into a coherent technical roadmap - Mentorship and technical leadership across Senior and Engineer-level teammates through design reviews, code reviews, and standards-setting The Environment This is a development-focused Staff role on a small dev plus ops team. It is not the role that keeps existing infrastructure running day-to-day. It is the role that builds the system that lets the next wave of deployments come online without proportional effort. Approximately 60% of the role is deep technical contribution on the hardest implementations. Approximately 40% is mentorship, planning, and decomposing the roadmap into delegable units of work for the rest of the team. Expect to operate inside a small-company environment with real technology constraints, real compliance overhead, and very little tolerance for sloppy architecture. Additional mid-level and senior engineers are planned to grow the team beneath this hire over the coming year. Must-Haves - Strong networking fundamentals and applied experience - Automation mindset; Python, Bash, or Ansible-style tooling at production quality - Deep experience in Cisco-based environments OR Linux-based networking (a blend is welcome) What You Bring To The Table - 7+ years building, designing, and operating infrastructure automation in distributed environments, with meaningful time at a Staff or equivalent level - Deep networking fundamentals: L2/L3 design, segmentation, routing where applicable, NAT, firewall policy, and secure transit - Depth in one of: Cisco-based network platforms (IOS-XE, NX-OS, DevNet tooling) or Linux-based networking (nftables/iptables, FRR, kernel networking stack). A blend is welcome. - Production-grade scripting and automation in Python and/or Bash; declarative IaC and configuration management (Ansible or equivalent) - Experience designing secure connectivity patterns: site-to-site VPN, IPSec, WireGuard or equivalent, certificate-based mTLS, Zero-Trust architecture - Pipeline-driven infrastructure delivery: CI/CD applied to network and host configuration, automated validation, rollback patterns - Observability instrumentation for network and host state (metrics, logs, synthetic checks, drift detection) - A track record of mentoring engineers, setting technical standards, and lifting team output beyond your own keyboard - Ability to use AI tooling as an accelerator without depending on it for core technical thinking. Internal AI tool availability is constrained by contracting policy. Nice To Have - CCNP, CCIE, or AWS Advanced Networking certifications - OT/ICS or critical infrastructure deployment experience - Network automation frameworks: Ansible network modules, Nornir, NAPALM, Cisco DevNet, open-source routing stacks (FRR, BIRD) - Hardware lifecycle and zero-touch deployment exposure - PKI and certificate automation (step-ca, ACME, internal CA operations) - Prior experience in federal or regulated industry environments - Prior experience in a sub-100 person company, or comfort adapting from a larger org into one A Few Things Worth Knowing - Compensation: $180,000 to $265,000 base, depending on experience and location - Location: Denver metro strongly preferred. Other US metros considered for the right candidate. - Work model: hybrid for local candidates with regular in-office presence. Remote candidates should expect quarterly in-person team time at minimum, with more frequent travel for deployment-related work. - US citizenship required. Must be able to obtain a federal network account, CAC, and Secret Clearance. Candidates may start without active clearance. Security-relevant certification (Security+, CISSP, or AWS security cert equivalent) required for production access within 30 to 90 days of hire. - Engagement: direct hire, retained search

Title: Senior Full Stack Developer Location: Bethesda, Maryland, United States Job Description: Why You'll Actually Care District Partners is recruiting for an established, well-capitalized mortgage REIT and fixed income investor building the next generation of the technology behind its trading, analytics, and front-to-back investment operations. The firm runs lean and moves fast. This role exists now because leadership decided to grow the development team directly rather than add management layers, so you would join as a builder with a clear path to expanding ownership over time. The firm is investing seriously in modern architecture and AI-assisted development this year and wants engineers who are excited to grow with it, not just maintain what exists. If you know mortgage and fixed income markets and want to go deep where your work reaches production quickly and influences real investment decisions, this is built for that. The Basics The client is a lean, well-capitalized mortgage REIT and fixed income investor operating in mortgage-backed securities within a regulated environment. Engineering sits directly alongside trading, portfolio management, finance, and operations, and the team is small enough that an individual contributor carries real influence and visibility up to senior technical leadership. This is a hands-on development role for someone who already understands the instruments and the trade lifecycle and wants depth in the business, not distance from it. What You'll Be Owning - Production-grade software across the firm's internal investment and operational systems - Backend services and business-facing applications supporting portfolio analytics, reporting, trading workflows, and operational processing - The translation of real requirements from trading, finance, and operations into scalable technical solutions - Engineering quality through thoughtful code review, automated testing, and strong development discipline - Technical initiatives owned end to end, from design through deployment and ongoing support - Practical use of modern AI-assisted development tools to improve productivity and delivery quality - A point of view on technical debt and modernization, with a hand in prioritizing what gets fixed and when The Environment This is a deliberately lean engineering team where business knowledge matters as much as the code. The firm first looked for a single broad senior hire and decided instead to invest in a developer who knows the domain and wants to grow into greater ownership. You would report directly to senior technical leadership and work shoulder to shoulder with the business. The role is an individual contributor to start, so you should want to build rather than manage on day one. The firm values people who have built a focused, stable track within finance and technology and who bring energy and start delivering quickly. What You Bring to the Table This is a selective search and the client is prioritizing a focused group of high-caliber candidates. - A stable, full-time career track with meaningful tenure and clear progression in each role, primarily within financial services - Demonstrated experience building or supporting fixed income or mortgage technology, ideally involving mortgage-backed securities - Familiarity with agency mortgage instruments, including pools, TBAs, and CMOs - A working understanding of the investment trade lifecycle, including trade capture, clearing, settlement, pricing, and accounting - Strong backend development in a JVM environment, primarily Java or Groovy - Hands-on experience building applications backed by MongoDB or a similar document-oriented database - Experience developing and deploying containerized applications in AWS</li> - Practical, responsible use of AI-assisted development tools - A track record of owning solutions independently from concept through production deployment - Clear communication of technical concepts and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical stakeholders Also valued: - Experience within a mortgage REIT, broker-dealer, asset manager, or other buy-side fixed income environment - Understanding of repo financing structures, including bilateral, tri-party, and reverse repo - Exposure to institutional fixed income clearing and settlement workflows - Familiarity with institutional fixed income trading, order management, or analytics platforms - Experience with LLM-powered application patterns such as retrieval-augmented generation, model context protocols, or structured extraction - Experience building internal business applications, financial analytics platforms, or reporting systems - Familiarity with frontend development using React and TypeScript A Few Things Worth Knowing Compensation (base plus bonus and equity): total compensation potential of approximately $240,000 to $280,000 - Base salary in the range of $190,000 to $235,000 - Annual performance bonus plus equity participation - Engagement: full-time, direct hire, individual contributor with a path to greater ownership - Location: Washington, DC or New York metro - Work model: hybrid, on site a few times a month and as needed, remote otherwise. The on-site cadence may become more regular over time, though that is not a current requirement - What stands out: deep domain work that reaches production fast, real investment in modern architecture and AI tooling, strong quality of life, and clear room to grow as the team expands