Senior Cloud Systems Administrator / DevSecOps Security Engineer

AMERICAN SYSTEMS; Alexandria (VA); On-site; USD 135,000 - 195,000; Full time

Job summary

AMERICAN SYSTEMS is seeking a Senior Cloud Systems Administrator / DevSecOps Security Engineer in Alexandria, VA. The role combines senior system administration, site reliability engineering, cloud operations, DevSecOps, and cybersecurity engineering for an IL5 CUI system.

You will manage DDMP cloud environments, harden CI/CD pipelines with automated security checks, and lead RMF/ATO evidence collection while coordinating with security stakeholders.

Qualifications

• BS Degree in a relevant field.
• 11+ years in systems administration, cloud operations, DevSecOps, or similar.
• 3+ years operating cloud-hosted, containerized, or hybrid enterprise apps in production.
• Top Secret Clearance with SCI eligibility.
• Hands-on Docker and Kubernetes administration including cluster/workload operations.
• Experience supporting a DoD IL5 environment and RMF artifacts.

Responsibilities

• Administer and sustain DDMP cloud environments across Development, Test, Training, and Production.
• Operate the Kubernetes environment supporting DDMP containerized services with deployment, monitoring, patching, and incident response.
• Maintain cloud infrastructure, networking, storage, databases, and DNS per security baselines.
• Support transition to elastic, cloud-native platform with multi-AZ resilience.
• Maintain backup, recovery, HA, DR, and restore validation procedures.

Skills

Linux administration

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud security

RMF/ATO

Zero-trust access

PostgreSQL

Education

BS Degree

Tools

GitLab

Splunk

Prometheus

Grafana

eMASS

Job description

Senior Cloud Systems Administrator / DevSecOps Security Engineer

Location: US-VA-Alexandria

ID: 2026-4988

Category: Software & Systems Development

Position Type: Full-Time

Remote: No

Clearance Required: Top Secret/SCI

Overview

AMERICAN SYSTEMS is an employee-owned federal government contractor supporting national priority programs through our strategic solutions in the areas of Information Technology, Engineering & Analysis, Test & Evaluation, and Training.

Responsibilities

Operate, sustain, automate, continuously improve, and secure DTE&A Data Management Platform (DDMP) environments across development, test, training, and production, with emphasis on availability, configuration compliance, observability, release support, and user-impacting operational excellence. This hybrid role combines senior system administration, site reliability engineering, cloud operations, DevSecOps, cybersecurity engineering, and RMF/ATO support for an IL5 CUI system.

Key Responsibilities

• Administer and sustain DDMP cloud environments across Development, Test, Training, and Production.
• Operate the managed Kubernetes environment supporting DDMP containerized application services, including deployment support, capacity monitoring, auto-scaling, patching, upgrades, and incident troubleshooting.
• Maintain cloud infrastructure, networking, storage, managed databases, integrations, service endpoints, certificates, and DNS in accordance with approved architecture and security baselines.
• Support the transition from the current VDI-hosted Linux/Windows server model to an elastic, multi-AZ, cloud-native platform.
• Maintain backup, recovery, high-availability, disaster-recovery, and restore-validation procedures for application, database, configuration, and infrastructure assets.
• Monitor availability, latency, performance, capacity, backup success, error rates, deployment health, and cloud-resource utilization.
• Develop operational dashboards and service-level metrics to support mission leadership and platform engineering decisions.
• Administer, maintain, and improve CI/CD pipelines for application, infrastructure, database, and configuration releases.
• Implement repeatable, auditable deployment and rollback procedures for Test, Training, and Production environments.
• Embed automated security checks into CI/CD pipelines, including source-code, dependency, secrets, container-image, IaC, and vulnerability scanning.
• Maintain secure artifact repositories, container registries, versioned configuration baselines, deployment manifests, and release evidence.
• Serve as the technical cybersecurity operations lead for DDMP, partnering with the cloud architect and program security stakeholders.
• Implement and maintain cloud IAM, Kubernetes RBAC, least-privilege access, service identities, secrets management, encryption, key management, and privileged-access controls.
• Operate continuous security monitoring, centralized audit logging, threat detection, security alerting, and vulnerability-management processes.
• Coordinate ACAS/Nessus scans, assess findings, validate remediation, document false positives or mitigations, and manage vulnerabilities through closure.
• Apply, validate, document, and sustain required DISA STIG and SRG configurations for operating systems, containers, Kubernetes, databases, applications, and supporting infrastructure.
• Support RMF and ATO activities by collecting, organizing, and maintaining technical evidence for implemented controls and continuous monitoring.
• Maintain POA&M items, security risk registers, remediation plans, and compliance status reports.

Qualifications

• BS Degree
• 11+ years of progressively responsible experience in systems administration, cloud operations, DevSecOps, cybersecurity engineering, site reliability engineering, or a comparable infrastructure/security discipline.
• 3+ years of experience operating cloud-hosted, containerized, or hybrid enterprise applications in production.
• Strong Linux systems-administration experience, preferably Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux or derivatives; working knowledge of Windows Server is required for transition from the current DDMP state.
• Top Secret Clearance with SCI eligibility
• Proven hands-on experience administering Docker and Kubernetes, including, cluster and workload operations; Namespace, RBAC, resource quota, ingress, storage, and network-policy management; Helm or equivalent package/deployment tooling; pod, node, container, certificate, networking, and deployment troubleshooting; and upgrade, patching, backup, recovery, scaling, and availability procedures.
• Direct experience supporting a DoD IL5 environment, a DISA-hosted service, NIPRNET-connected workloads, or a system operating under a DoW ATO.
• Experience supporting CAC/PKI-based authentication, ICAM federation, certificate lifecycle management, and zero-trust access patterns.
• Experience performing or supporting ISSO, ISSM, SCA-V, security-control assessor, ATO, or continuous-monitoring functions.
• Experience developing or maintaining RMF artifacts, including, System Security Plan; Control Implementation statements; Control Inheritance matrices; Security Assessment evidence; POA&M; Continuous-monitoring Strategy; Incident-response Plan; and Contingency Plan and Disaster-recovery Test evidence.
• Experience with eMASS or another DoW governance, risk, and compliance system.
• Experience with GitLab security capabilities or equivalent tools for static application security testing, dynamic application security testing, software composition analysis, secrets detection, container image scanning, infrastructure-as-code scanning, and SBOM generation and software supply-chain controls.
• Experience implementing Kubernetes security controls, including workload identity, pod-security standards, admission control, image provenance, runtime protection, network segmentation, and audit logging.
• Experience with Splunk, Elastic, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, cloud-native monitoring, or comparable observability platforms.
• Experience administering PostgreSQL, including backup and restoration validation, maintenance, performance triage, replication monitoring, access controls, and encryption.
• Experience securing API gateways, REST/GraphQL APIs, API tokens, service-to-service authentication, and external-system integrations.
• Experience supporting Microsoft 365/SharePoint Online integrations, especially where SharePoint serves as an authoritative artifact repository.
• Familiarity with the security considerations for managed AI/LLM services, including CUI/data-boundary protection, access controls, audit logging, prompt/data retention, output validation, and human-in-the-loop decision processes.
• Experience with ITIL-aligned incident, problem, change, configuration, and service-level management.

Pay Transparency Statement

AMERICAN SYSTEMS is committed to pay transparency for our applicants and employee-owners. The salary range for this position is USD $135,000.00/Yr. - USD $195,000/Yr. Actual compensation will be determined based on several factors permitted by law. AMERICAN SYSTEMS provides for the welfare of its employees and their dependents through a comprehensive benefits program by offering healthcare benefits, paid leave, retirement plans, insurance programs, and education and training assistance.

EEO Statement

EEO Race/Sex/Disability Status/Veteran Status