Senior Platform / Cloud / DevSecOps Engineer

Strategic ACI; Springfield (VA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Strategic ACI is seeking a Senior Platform / Cloud / DevSecOps Engineer to design, build, and operate a Cloud Native Platform supporting NGA initiatives. The role emphasizes secure, scalable data flows, CI/CD, automation, and DoD-aligned Zero Trust practices across multi-cloud and on‑prem environments.

The candidate will lead platform workstreams, ensure quality within time and budget, and contribute to engineering excellence in a high-security environment.

Qualifications

• Active TS clearance with SCI eligibility and CI polygraph within 30 days.
• 10+ years of platform engineering, cloud infra, or DevSecOps experience.
• Hands-on production Kubernetes in multi-cloud and on‑prem.
• Experience GitOps, IaC, and container image hardening.
• Strong CI/CD design and guidance for DoD‑level programs.

Responsibilities

• Assess and deploy a unified Cloud Native Platform across multi‑cloud and air‑gapped environments.
• Stand up and operate Kubernetes clusters with GitOps, service mesh, observability.
• Implement identity and secrets management and DoD ZTA compliance.
• Craft IaC/CaC for platform components and support license management.
• Deliver CI/CD pipelines and enable telemetry, high availability, and onboarding.

Skills

Kubernetes

GitOps

CI/CD

Terraform

Ansible

Zero Trust

Secrets management

Azure Entra ID

Keycloak

DoD compliance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Engineering or related field

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

HashiCorp Vault

Keycloak

Azure Entra ID

Job description

Strategic ACI is seeking a Senior Platform / Cloud / DevSecOps Engineer to build and operate the Cloud Native Platform (CNP) underpinning a Digital Engineering Ecosystem supporting NGA — the foundation enabling secure, scalable data flows and Digital Threads across the enterprise.

This role delivers platform configuration, CI/CD integration, automation, infrastructure support, and operational environment management, hardened to Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) standards, across multi-cloud and on-prem environments. As a senior-level engineering role, this position leads the technical/engineering portion of major platform workstreams and ensures deliverables meet established quality standards within time and budget constraints.

Salary will be commensurate within the advertised range, based on applicable qualifications.

Responsibilities

• Assess current infrastructure and design/deploy a unified Cloud Native Platform enabling Enterprise Architecture and Business Intelligence capabilities across new and existing multi-cloud environments.
• Stand up and operate Kubernetes clusters (EKS, AKS, RKE2, or NKP) with GitOps-based deployment, service mesh/ingress/egress, and observability tooling.
• Implement identity and access management integration (e.g., Keycloak or Azure Entra ID) and secrets management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault or Azure Key Vault).
• Harden the platform in accordance with DoD Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) guidance, leveraging hardened container images and Kubernetes policy enforcement.
• Build and maintain Infrastructure as Code / Configuration as Code (IaC/CaC) for platform components.
• Support air-gapped/disconnected environment management and license management tooling.
• Deliver CI/CD pipelines, automation, and operational support enabling telemetry, inventory management, and centralized access services as the platform matures.
• Support onboarding, help desk integration, high availability/disaster recovery, and a unified portal experience as the platform scales to support a growing user base and external stakeholders.

Qualifications

Required:

• Active TS clearance, with SCI eligibility and the ability to pass a CI polygraph within 30 days.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or additional relevant experience in lieu of a degree.
• 10+ years of platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, or DevSecOps experience.
• Hands-on experience deploying and operating Kubernetes in production (EKS, AKS, RKE2, NKP, or comparable), including GitOps workflows.
• Experience implementing Zero Trust Architecture principles, including identity federation, secrets management, and policy enforcement.
• Strong background in CI/CD pipeline design, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible, or comparable), and container image hardening/supply chain security.

Desired

• Experience supporting NGA, DoD, or Intelligence Community cloud environments and Authority to Operate (ATO)/compliance processes.
• Familiarity with service mesh technologies (Istio) and observability stacks (Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry).
• Experience with license management tooling and air-gap update/patch management.
• Relevant certifications: CKA/CKAD, AWS/Azure cloud certifications, or DevSecOps-focused certifications (e.g., Security+, CASP+).
• Experience supporting help desk/ITSM tooling for platform onboarding and support.