Senior AWS Platform Engineer (Remote)

CertiPath; Reston (VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Health Savings Account plan

401(k) plan with generous employer match

Unlimited PTO policy

Seven company holidays

Week-long break at the end of each year

Job summary

CertiPath is seeking a Senior AWS Platform Engineer in Reston, Virginia. This role involves leading the design and management of a production CI/CD platform based on AWS EKS. Candidates should have over 8 years of professional software engineering experience, with strong expertise in AWS Kubernetes, CI/CD systems, and automation workflows. The position offers outstanding benefits including health, dental, vision coverage, a 401(k) plan, and an unlimited PTO policy, promoting a quality work-life balance.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of progressive professional software engineering or DevOps experience.
• 5+ years of expert-level AWS Kubernetes experience.
• Strong IaC and automation skills with Terraform and Helm.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and maintenance of AWS EKS clusters.
• Ensure reliability and security of production cloud services.
• Optimize container image building pipelines.

Skills

AWS Kubernetes

CI/CD systems

Terraform

Python

Cloud security best practices

Docker and Kaniko

GitOps workflows

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

GitHub Actions

Prometheus

Grafana

Helm

Nutanix

Job description

Overview

Want to energize your career? Looking for stability with the freedom to innovate? At CertiPath you can have both while making the world more secure and simplifying access processes. We are seeking an experienced Senior AWS Platform Engineer to lead the design, security, and scaling of our AWS EKS-based CI/CD platform and bootstrap our IVIP production cloud services. Join our team of engineers, make a difference, and crush your goals at CertiPath.

I’ve never heard of CertiPath. What do you do?

We are the experts in software and services for high-assurance digital identity verification and management. We are an established organization with a 21-year track record of delivering on our promises with the drive and entrepreneurial spirit of a start-up. CertiPath is focused on bringing facility and network access management for commercial clients and government agencies into the 21st century.

Responsibilities

What will the Senior AWS Platform Engineer at CertiPath Do?

You will be a technical leader and individual contributor who sets the bar for AWS Kubernetes and SaaS infrastructure excellence across the organization. You’ll design and deliver secure, high-performance, production-grade CI/CD systems on AWS EKS using GitHub Actions and partner closely with platform, security, and executive leadership to shape the technical roadmap for our AWS EKS.

This is not a people-management role; it’s a deeply technical position for infrastructure engineers who still love building and automating while influencing architecture and strategy at the highest level.

You will be asked to work 3 days per week at our Reston, Virginia location.

What does a typical day look like for the Senior AWS Platform Engineer at CertiPath?

• Lead the design, provisioning, and ongoing maintenance of production-grade AWS EKS clusters (Rancher-managed) using Infrastructure as Code.
• Own the reliability, availability, performance, and security of production cloud services, including participation in an on-call rotation and off-hours incident response.
• Architect, deploy, and scale Actions Runner Controller (both legacy and the new GitHub-supported gha-runner-scale-set) on AWS EKS with ephemeral runner pods, autoscaling, and GitHub App-based authentication.
• Champion cybersecurity best practices across the entire platform, including least-privilege IAM, pod security policies, network policies, secrets management, vulnerability scanning, and compliance controls.
• Optimize container image building pipelines (Docker-in-Docker → Kaniko) and manage internal registries (Nexus, Harbor) to support our SaaS delivery platforms.
• Write and maintain Terraform, Helm, and Kubernetes manifests for EKS, networking, node pools, storage, and CI/CD components while driving GitOps practices.
• Help design and manage hybrid networking between AWS EKS and on-prem Nutanix environments, including VLANs, routing, Load Balancer services, and secure egress to GitHub Enterprise and other SaaS services.
• Instrument Prometheus/Grafana stacks, monitor runner pod lifecycle, build performance, and cluster resource utilization while implementing proactive scaling.

What qualifications do you look for?

You might be the Senior AWS Platform Engineer we’re looking for if you have:

• U.S. citizenship and the ability to obtain a government clearance.
• At least a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 8+ years of progressive professional software engineering experience or DevOps experience.
• 5+ years of expert-level AWS Kubernetes experience with EKS (Rancher-managed), EC2 (spot + reserved instances), VPC networking, IAM, Security Groups, Transit Gateway, and cost-optimized SaaS infrastructure on AWS.
• Deep expertise building and operating production CI/CD platforms at scale, including on-call support and incident response.
• Expert-level Kubernetes and CI/CD experience, including Actions Runner Controller (legacy + new gha-runner-scale-set), Helm, ephemeral runners, Docker-in-Docker, Kaniko, and GitHub Enterprise (ghe.com).
• Strong IaC and automation skills with Terraform, Helm, Kubernetes manifests, and GitOps workflows.
• A strong security-first mindset with hands-on experience implementing cybersecurity best practices in SaaS and hybrid cloud environments.
• Proven experience successfully working with CI/CD, container platforms, and workloads in AWS EKS (Nutanix NKP experience is a big plus).
• Strong experience with Python for writing scripts and debugging.
• Familiarity with Agentive Artificial Intelligence in Engineering
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; you can explain complex technical concepts to engineers and non-engineers.
• A demonstrated ability to balance speed and quality; you ship fast without sacrificing long-term maintainability.

Nice-to-have qualifications

• AWS DevOps Engineer - Professional certification.
• Experience with Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP), or Prism Central.
• Familiarity with Harbor Registry (RBAC, robot accounts, garbage collection).
• Experience with air-gapped or restricted network deployment.
• Python or Go scripting for automation.
• A background in FinTech or regulated SaaS environments.

Benefits

CertiPath offers outstanding benefits, including health, dental, and vision coverage; a Health Savings Account plan; and a 401(k) plan with a generous employer match. We also believe strongly in maintaining a quality work-life balance, so we offer an unlimited PTO policy, seven company holidays, and a week-long break at the end of each year.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability; status as a protected veteran; or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local, or international law.