AI Platform Engineer - DoD GovCloud & ATO Expert

VAE, Inc.; Virginia (MN); On-site; USD 175,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

VAE, Inc. seeks an AI Platform Engineer to own the technical accreditation strategy and cloud runtime for the C5ISR program's agentic AI platform.

This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, DevSecOps, and security accreditation, serving as the primary interface to security engineering and authorization staff. The ideal candidate has deep AWS GovCloud and Kubernetes experience with hands-on ATO/cATO lineage.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in CS/EE/Data Science or related field.
• 8+ years of hands-on cloud/platform/DevOps or MLOps engineering.
• Active Secret clearance with ability to obtain Top Secret clearance.
• DOD 8570 certification required.
• Experience taking a system through formal security accreditation and interfacing with security stakeholders.
• Hands-on DoD/federal accredited cloud environment (IL4/IL5, FedRAMP).
• Proficiency in Python and at least one IaC tech.
• Hands-on experience with AWS, Docker, and Kubernetes in deployments.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Understanding of ML/LLM serving, scaling, securing, and monitoring.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical accreditation strategy for the program's agentic AI platform, including control approach for model and behavior.
• Author and maintain artifacts supporting ATO and cATO packages (POA&M, architecture and data flow docs).
• Interface with security engineering, ISSO/ISSM, and authorizing staff to support authorization decisions.
• Design, build, and operate the AWS GovCloud cloud runtime for agentic AI workloads (IL5) with Kubernetes.
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation) including container hardening.
• Integrate Amazon Bedrock and other model endpoints; manage IAM, quotas, and network boundaries.
• Instrument traffic for logging, tracing, cost attribution, and audit for observability.
• Apply MLOps best practices: model/versioning, deployment gating, monitoring, rollback.
• Mentor engineers on accreditable design patterns and secure development practices.
• Develop and execute the platform technical roadmap aligned to program goals.

Skills

AWS GovCloud

Kubernetes

Terraform

CloudFormation

CI/CD pipelines

Python

DoD IL4/IL5

Security accreditation

Active Secret clearance

8570 certification

Platform One

Bedrock

SageMaker

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Data Science, Mathematics, or a related field

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Docker

Kubernetes

Platform One

Bedrock

SageMaker

Job description

VAE, Inc. seeks an AI Platform Engineer to own the technical accreditation strategy and cloud runtime for the C5ISR program's agentic AI platform.

This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, DevSecOps, and security accreditation, serving as the primary interface to security engineering and authorization staff. The ideal candidate has deep AWS GovCloud and Kubernetes experience with hands-on ATO/cATO lineage.