Senior Platform Engineer – DevSecOps for Classified Ops

Defense Unicorns; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 149,000 - 201,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Premiums are 100% Company Paid

Health Savings Account

Life Insurance

Disability Insurance

401k Retirement Plan

Company Stock Options

Home Office Budget

Flexible Time Off (FTO) and Federal/HW

Job summary

Defense Unicorns seeks a senior DevSecOps Engineer to embed with a government team and its partners, building an AI-powered engineering ecosystem. The role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, cybersecurity, compliance, and software delivery, crafting secure, automated pipelines.

Expect hands-on work with Kubernetes/OpenShift, NIST RMF controls, and automated evidence generation for mission environments.

Qualifications

• Active TS/SCI clearance is required.
• Must reside in or be local to the National Capital Region and be able to work onsite in Springfield, VA.
• Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes and containerized app environments.
• Experience deploying and operating workloads on Red Hat OpenShift and/or enterprise Kubernetes.
• Strong experience with GitLab CI/CD or comparable platforms.
• Strong working knowledge of NIST SP 800-53 and RMF.
• Practical understanding of the government ATO process including control implementation, evidence, remediation, assessment.
• Experience designing and managing Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible.
• Strong experience with Helm, Kubernetes manifests, GitOps, and declarative config.
• Experience with AWS and cloud-native services.
• Solid Linux troubleshooting across app/containers/Kubernetes/network/infra.
• Experience with container security and software supply-chain controls.
• Scripting/programming ability (Python/Go/Bash).
• Ability to work with government personnel and multiple vendors to resolve complex issues.
• Ability to operate autonomously and translate mission objectives into working solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and improve secure CI/CD and GitOps pipelines for cloud-native software, AI models, and agentic apps.
• Work hands-on with Kubernetes and OpenShift environments to automate secure build, test, deployment, and lifecycle workflows.
• Translate NIST 800-53 controls and RMF requirements into practical engineering controls and evidence collection.
• Identify security/compliance/configuration/supply-chain risks early in the lifecycle before testing.
• Support end-to-end ATO/RMF lifecycle, including evidence generation and remediation tracking.
• Build and maintain automated security checks across source, containers, and deployment pipelines.
• Develop IaC using Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible to ensure auditable environments.
• Configure and improve GitLab CI/CD pipelines, runners, registries, and workflows across environments.
• Integrate identity, secrets management, policy enforcement, logging, and security tooling into the platform.
• Collaborate with engineers to design security/compliance into the system rather than as a gate.

Skills

Kubernetes

OpenShift

GitLab CI/CD

NIST SP 800-53

RMF

AWS

Linux

Terraform

Pulumi

Ansible

Helm

GitOps

Python/Go/Bash

Automation

Security tooling

Tools

Red Hat OpenShift

Terraform

Pulumi

Ansible

GitLab CI/CD

Job description

Defense Unicorns seeks a senior DevSecOps Engineer to embed with a government team and its partners, building an AI-powered engineering ecosystem. The role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, cybersecurity, compliance, and software delivery, crafting secure, automated pipelines.

Expect hands-on work with Kubernetes/OpenShift, NIST RMF controls, and automated evidence generation for mission environments.