CUB003 Senior DevOps Engineer

Senior DevOps Engineer

Location: Ashburn (full-time onsite)

Clearance: DoD Secret

 

Job Details:

Overview

We are seeking a Senior Platform & Release Engineer to help design, build, secure, and deliver Kubernetes-based platforms and release systems in complex operational environments, including offline and air-gapped deployments. This role is ideal for an engineer who thrives at the intersection of platform engineering, automation, release management, and developer enablement.

The ideal candidate combines deep Kubernetes and infrastructure expertise with strong software engineering skills and a pragmatic, security-conscious mindset. You should be comfortable building automation and tooling, supporting deployment pipelines, troubleshooting across the full stack, and improving developer/operator workflows. We are also looking for someone who embraces AI-assisted engineering workflows and uses modern tooling to accelerate productivity and operational excellence.

Responsibilities

• 
  Design, build, and maintain a Kubernetes-based platform and release systems for secure and constrained environments
  
• 
  Develop and maintain automation tooling, deployment workflows, and operational utilities using Python, Bash, and infrastructure-as-code approaches
  
• 
  Build and support release pipelines, artifact management workflows, and reproducible deployment bundles
  
• 
  Maintain and improve internal operator and engineering workbench tools using modern web technologies
  
• 
  Support Kubernetes platform operations, including cluster provisioning, upgrades, configuration management, and troubleshooting
  
• 
  Engineer secure deployment workflows with strong attention to credential handling, certificate management, secrets isolation, and deployment guardrails
  
• 
  Collaborate across engineering teams to improve platform reliability, deployment consistency, and operational efficiency
  
• 
  Troubleshoot complex issues spanning applications, containers, clusters, hosts, networking, storage, and artifact distribution systems
  
• 
  Mentor junior engineers and help establish engineering best practices across platform and release operations
  
• 
  Continuously improve engineering workflows through automation, AI-assisted tooling, and operational best practices
  

Required Qualifications

• 
  Senior-level experience in platform engineering, release engineering, or DevOps/SRE roles supporting Kubernetes-based systems
  
• 
  Hands-on experience operating Kubernetes in offline, air-gapped, or otherwise constrained deployment environments
  

Strong expertise with:

• 
  Kubernetes
  
• 
  Helm
  
• 
  RKE2
  
• 
  Ansible Playbooks
  
• 
  Jinja templating
  

Strong automation and tooling development experience using:

• 
  Python
  
• 
  Bash
  

Working full-stack development capability with:

• 
  TypeScript/JavaScript
  
• 
  React
  
• 
  Tailwind CSS
  

Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines and artifact management workflows using:

• 
  Git
  
• 
  Artifactory
  
• 
  Container registries (including Zot or similar)
  
• 
  Helm charts
  
• 
  Signed and reproducible release bundles
  

Experience implementing secure engineering and deployment practices, including:

• 
  Credential and secret management
  
• 
  TLS certificates and CA bundle management
  
• 
  Deployment boundaries and operational guardrails
  

Strong understanding of:

• 
  Platform engineering
  
• 
  Release engineering
  
• 
  PaaS/SaaS delivery models
  
• 
  Operator-focused tooling and workflows
  
• 
  Must be eligible to obtain a DOD Security Clearance
  

Preferred Qualifications

• 
  Experience supporting government, defense, intelligence community (IC), or similarly regulated environments
  
• 
  Strong Linux systems engineering experience, particularly in:
  
• 
  RHEL/Rocky Linux environments
  
• 
  Docker/container runtimes
  
• 
  RKE2
  
• 
  Networking and storage systems
  
• 
  Host provisioning and preparation
  
• 
  Security-minded engineering approach that balances automation, maintainability, auditability, and operational constraints
  
• 
  Strong troubleshooting and root-cause analysis skills across:
  
• 
  Application layers
  
• 
  Kubernetes clusters
  
• 
  Host systems
  
• 
  Networking
  
• 
  Artifact repositories
  
• 
  Authentication and credential systems
  
• 
  Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and clearly communicate complex platform concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders
  

What Success Looks Like

• 
  Reliable, repeatable, and secure platform deployments across connected and disconnected environments
  
• 
  Streamlined release and artifact workflows with strong operational visibility and reproducibility
  
• 
  Improved developer and operator experience through automation and tooling
  
• 
  Faster issue resolution through strong systems-level troubleshooting
  
• 
  Continuous improvement of engineering practices using modern automation and AI-assisted workflows