Senior HPC DevOps Engineer | TS/SCI w/ MD POLY Security Clearance required

Capstone Technology Partners; College Park (MD); On-site; USD 222,000 - 257,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Four weeks paid time off

Eleven paid holidays

401k with employer contributions and 3

Annual bonuses for performance

Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance

Education and training budget

Certification and coursework budget

Amazon Prime Membership Reimbursement

Birthday Club

Capstone Swag

Job summary

Capstone Technology Partners seeks a senior HPC DevOps Engineer to own operations and automation for a large compute cluster in College Park, MD. You will codify repeatable tasks with Ansible, enforce desired state, and drive automation through an enterprise controller.

You will collaborate with our Maryland-based customer, apply security baselines, and ensure incident readiness with robust runbooks and logs. The role requires active TS/SCI with MD polygraph clearance.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience and a BS in computer science, IT, or related field; MS and 10 years, or a Ph.D. with 8 years of experience.
• 7+ years in Linux systems / SRE / DevOps, including production cluster operations in HPC or large-scale compute environments.
• 3+ years of experience building and operating Ansible automation at scale (roles/collections, idempotency, inventories, secrets).
• Strong Linux hardening &"+" compliance fundamentals (SELinux/AppArmor, SSH key automation, baseline config management).
• Demonstrated experience operating or automating clustered compute environments (HPC, large Linux farms, or similar).
• Hands-on experience with container tooling in Linux environments, including image lifecycle/versioning.
• Familiarity with incident response and runbook-driven operations; ability to automate common remediations.
• Strong Git workflow and documentation practices.

Responsibilities

• Enforce desired-state across cluster services via code-driven configuration; implement drift detection and alert on deviations; reconcile runtime state vs configured state.
• Build and maintain an automated node bootstrap workflow for Bare-metal/VM onboarding; apply security baselines and enroll nodes into scheduler and storage ecosystem.
• Implement rolling maintenance and patch automation; maintain version-controlled container build definitions and integrate image scanning into build/release lifecycles.
• Ensure auditable logs and integrate with metrics/alerting for reliable incident response and auto-remediation.
• Automate responses to common incidents leveraging out-of-band hardware management interfaces and standard runbooks.
• Keep runbooks and operational docs versioned alongside automation; publish operator guidance to documentation platforms.

Skills

Linux systems

SRE / DevOps

Ansible automation

Security hardening

Git workflows

Container tooling

Incident response/runbooks

Documentation practices

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Master's degree in Computer Science or related field

Ph.D. with 8+ years experience

Tools

Ansible

Foreman/MAAS

Job description

Senior HPC DevOps Engineer | TS/SCI w/ MD POLY Security Clearance required

• College Park, MD

LCAT: IE3

Salary Range: $222- 257K

Location: College Park, MD

Security Clearance Required: TS/SCI with MD polygraph

Job Description:

We are seeking a fully cleared Senior HPC DevOps Engineer to own the operations and automation lifecycle for an existing HPC/AI compute cluster (Linux). You will work closely with team members, as well as directly with our Maryland-based customer, in a fast-paced environment. In this role you will codify repeatable operations in Ansible and drive execution through an enterprise automation controller to enforce desired state, detect drift, accelerate node onboarding, and streamline incident response via runbook automation integrated with monitoring and ITSM.

About US:

Capstone Technology Partners delivers mission-ready cybersecurity, engineering, and AI-enhanced software solutions for federal defense clients. We combine deep technical expertise with a people-first culture to help modernize securely, accelerate capability delivery, and strengthen operational resilience. Our work supports DoW, with proven experience in ICAM, Zero Trust, cloud-native engineering, and secure Agile development.

Capstone is built on Collaboration, Culture, Connection, and Community. Values that guide every engagement and every mission we support. We deliver secure, scalable solutions designed to meet the evolving demands of our clients’ operations.

Key Responsibilities may include:

• Desired-state and drift detection: Enforce desired state across cluster services via code-driven configuration; implement drift detection and alert on deviations; reconcile runtime state vs configured state.
• Compute node onboarding (Bare-metal/VM): Build and maintain an automated node bootstrap workflow that installs/configures the OS, applies security and performance baselines, enrolls nodes into the scheduler and shared storage ecosystem, validates hardware and service readiness (CPU, network, accelerator, storage mounts), and reports pass/fail results.
• Patch & vulnerability response: Implement rolling maintenance and patch automation to meet defined vulnerability response SLAs. Maintain version-controlled container build definitions and integrate image scanning into the build/release lifecycle.
• Logging & observability: Ensure automation and operational workflows emit auditable logs to centralized analytics and integrate with metrics/alerting to enable reliable incident response, proactive detection, and safe auto-remediation.
• Incident/problem management: Automate responses to common incidents (hung nodes, storage performance alarms, image vulnerabilities, hardware failures) leveraging out-of-band hardware management interfaces and standardized runbooks.
• Docs-as-code: Keep runbooks and operational documentation versioned alongside automation and publish operator guidance to the orgs documentation platform.

Required qualifications

12+ years of experience and a BS in computer science, IT, or related technical field, MS and 10 years of experience, or a Ph.D. with 8 years of experience. Four years of additional experience is required in lieu of a Bachelors’ degree for a total of 16 years of experience.

7+ years in Linux systems / SRE / DevOps, including production cluster operations in an HPC or large-scale compute environment.

3+ years of experience building and operating Ansible automation at scale (roles/collections, idempotency, inventories, secrets).

Strong Linux hardening & compliance fundamentals (SELinux/AppArmor, SSH key automation, baseline config management).

Demonstrated experience operating or automating clustered compute environments (HPC, large Linux farms, or similar).

Hands-on experience with container tooling in Linux environments, including image lifecycle/versioning.

Familiarity with incident response and runbook-driven operations; ability to automate common remediations.

Strong Git workflow and documentation practices.

Must hold at least one active/current technical certification from the following-

• Information security (e.g., CISSP)
• Networking (e.g., CCNA)
• System Administration (e.g., RHCE, MCSE)
• IT systems management (e.g., ITIL)

This position requires an active/current TS/SCI w/ Polygraph.

Preferred qualifications

• Bare-metal provisioning experience (PXE/iPXE, Kickstart/Preseed, Foreman/MAAS) and hardware OOB management.
• CI/testing for automation and promotion pipelines for playbooks
• Experience with tuned performance profiles, HPC performance troubleshooting, and GPU node health validation.
• Experience generation operational documentation from repos (Confluence).

Capstone offers a very competitive benefits package because we care about our employees. Our offerings including:

• Four (4) weeks paid time
• Eleven Paid Holidays
• 401k plan with 4% employer contributions and immediate vesting plus annual 3% contruibution
• Annual Bonuses for performance
• Medical, Dental, and Vision and insurance
• Education and Training budget provided
• Technical Certification and coursework budget for computer/program expenses
• Amazon Prime Membership Reimbursement
• Birthday Club
• Capstone Swag