Platform Engineer - Cloud, Kubernetes, Secret Clearance

Defense Unicorns; Colorado Springs (CO); On-site; USD 123,000 - 167,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision - company paid

401k Retirement Plan

Company Stock Options

Home Office Budget

Flexible Time Off

Job summary

Defense Unicorns seeks a Platform Engineer to join a DevOps/SRE platform team responsible for a cloud-based environment. You will deploy and operate Kubernetes clusters, build IaC, and manage CI/CD pipelines across cloud environments with strong focus on reliability and security.

The role requires collaboration with application teams, hands-on Kubernetes expertise, and the ability to work in a remote, async setting. Expect on-call rotations and mentorship of junior engineers.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes clusters, deploying, managing, and troubleshooting workloads.
• Experience with infrastructure as code tools such as Terraform or Pulumi.
• Proficiency with CI/CD tooling, especially GitLab CI or equivalent.
• Working knowledge of Linux/Unix and CLI administration.
• Experience with AWS cloud services (EC2, EKS, IAM, S3, VPC).
• Familiarity with containerization (Docker, registry management).
• Ability to read/write YAML for Kubernetes manifests, CRDs, Helm charts, pipelines.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently in a remote, asynchronous environment.
• US citizenship required; eligible for CUI access.
• Security certification like DoD 8570 IAT II is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build, maintain, and improve Kubernetes clusters across cloud environments (AWS, EKS, RKE2).
• Develop and manage infrastructure as code to provision platform resources consistently.
• Own and improve CI/CD pipelines and GitLab configurations.
• Support identity and access management integration (Keycloak).
• Implement monitoring, alerting, and logging for platform health and incident response.
• Manage certificate lifecycle and automation for public certs.
• Contribute to platform security via container security practices and ATO readiness.
• Collaborate with application teams to troubleshoot deployments and pipelines.
• Write and maintain runbooks, ADRs, and operational standards.
• Influence strategic planning aligning tech with mission objectives.
• Participate in on-call rotations and tier-2 incident support.
• Mentor junior engineers via pairing and code reviews.

Skills

Kubernetes

Terraform

Pulumi

GitLab CI

Linux

AWS

Docker

YAML

CI/CD

Security

Tools

GitLab CI

Prometheus

Grafana

ELK Stack

Job description

Defense Unicorns seeks a Platform Engineer to join a DevOps/SRE platform team responsible for a cloud-based environment. You will deploy and operate Kubernetes clusters, build IaC, and manage CI/CD pipelines across cloud environments with strong focus on reliability and security.

The role requires collaboration with application teams, hands-on Kubernetes expertise, and the ability to work in a remote, async setting. Expect on-call rotations and mentorship of junior engineers.