Software Engineer - Kubernetes

Nightwing provides technically advanced full-spectrum cyber, data operations, systems integration and intelligence mission support services to meet our customers' most demanding challenges. Our capabilities include cyber space operations, cyber defense and resiliency, vulnerability research, ubiquitous technical surveillance, data intelligence, lifecycle mission enablement, and software modernization. Nightwing brings disruptive technologies, agility, and competitive offerings to customers in the intelligence community, defense, civil, and commercial markets.

We're expanding our Kubernetes-backed containerization and orchestration platform and seeking a Software Engineer who is passionate about building secure, scalable, and automated capabilities end-to-end. You'll own features across the full development lifecycle-from design and development to deployment and operations-while enforcing strong security guardrails and enabling efficient multi-tenant workload isolation. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy working close to the platform, automating everything, and turning complex operational requirements into elegant, repeatable solutions.

TS/SCI with current Full-Scope Polygraph (required)

Responsibilities

• Design & build new capabilities for our Kubernetes platform, including container orchestration workflows, deployment tooling, and operational automation.
• Develop and maintain custom Helm charts (or equivalent Kubernetes resource management artifacts) for repeatable, compliant deployments across environments.
• Implement and enforce Kubernetes RBAC security policies, native roles, and role bindings for least-privilege access and granular workload isolation.
• Leverage namespaces to segment workloads and align tenancy, compliance, and operational boundaries.
• Integrate CI/CD pipelines with Kubernetes orchestration to automate build, test, deploy, and rollback processes.
• Instrument workloads and platform components with metrics, health checks, and standardized endpoints to improve observability and SLO adherence.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with security, cloud, networking, and application teams to ensure platform capabilities meet mission needs.
• Document architecture, patterns, runbooks, and guardrails to drive consistency and enable self-service.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or closely related field; or equivalent practical experience.
• Full development lifecycle experience delivering capabilities on Kubernetes (design, build, test, deploy, operate).
• Hands-on experience building and maintaining custom Kubernetes Helm charts or an equivalent resource manager (e.g., Kustomize ).
• Proven expertise with Kubernetes RBAC policy configuration and enforcement.
• Practical use of namespaces to separate and manage workloads.
• Experience configuring granular workload permissions using native roles and role bindings .
• Experience building automation pipelines (CI/CD) that interface directly with Kubernetes orchestration (e.g., GitOps , progressive delivery).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing custom Kubernetes controllers , including mutating and validating admission webhooks to enforce policy and standardization.
• Hands-on with advanced security policy enforcement using Istio service mesh (e.g., mTLS , policy, traffic management).
• Experience defining custom Kubernetes-native network policies (CNI) for zero-trust segmentation.
• Track record managing multiple, isolated tenants within a single Kubernetes environment.
• Experience generating and collecting workload metrics using standard endpoints (e.g., Prometheus, OpenMetrics ) and exposing health probes.
• Integration of Kubernetes workloads with AWS cloud-native services using IAM role permissions (e.g., IRSA, service account role mapping).

Clearance & Eligibility

• Active TS/SCI with polygraph required Day 1
• U.S. citizenship required due to clearance requirements.

At Nightwing, we value collaboration and teamwork. You'll have the opportunity to work alongside talented individuals who are passionate about what they do. Together, we'll leverage our collective expertise to drive innovation, solve complex problems, and deliver exceptional results for our clients.

Thank you for considering joining us as we embark on this new journey and shape the future of cybersecurity and intelligence together as part of the Nightwing team.

Nightwing is An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status, age or any other federally protected class.