Senior/Staff DevOps Engineer, Federal

Trase Systems; Seattle, McLean (WA, VA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Parental leave

Unlimited PTO

Professional development

401(k) and equity options

Mental health benefits

Job summary

Trase Systems is seeking Senior or Staff DevOps Engineers to build, deploy, and operate the infra powering Red Cell Federal and Red Cell Partners. You will collaborate with partner engineers, TPM, Platform Engineering, and GRC to deploy validated, secure environments.

The role covers Kubernetes, IaC, secure releases, observability, and production support across AWS/Azure/GCP and on‑prem networks, with leadership expectations for architecture and reusable standards.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software, platform, infrastructure, SRE, or DevOps engineering experience.
• Hands-on with Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, and production cluster operations.
• Experience with Helm and infrastructure as code (Terraform or Pulumi).
• Experience with two of AWS, Azure, GCP; hybrid/on-prem deployments.
• CI/CD or GitOps, observability, and incident response for production services.
• Strong software engineering and automation skills in Python, Go, TypeScript.

Responsibilities

• Build, deploy, and operate infra for RCF/RCP partner environments across AWS, Azure, GCP, and on‑prem or customer‑controlled infra.
• Package and validate Trase OS services using Docker, Kubernetes, Helm; maintain image inventories and release manifests.
• Create reusable IaC modules and CI/CD workflows (Terraform, Pulumi, Argo CD).
• Prepare networking, IAM, secrets, certificates, storage, and connectivity; support restricted-network deployments.
• Own triage and troubleshooting for deployments and production issues; coordinate with partners.
• Deliver tested releases, patches, upgrades with automated validation, smoke tests, and release notes.
• Operate logs, metrics, dashboards, alerts, and SLOs; support incident response and capacity planning.
• Collaborate with security teams on hardening, SBOMs, and RMF/ATO evidence.

Skills

U.S. citizenship

Linux

Docker

Kubernetes

Python

Go

TypeScript

CI/CD

Troubleshooting

Partner-facing communications

Security awareness

AI-assisted coding/tools

Education

U.S. citizenship (listed under qualifications)

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

Argo CD

Terraform/Pulumi modules

Job description

Seattle, WA or McLean, VA (Preferred) or Remote (USA)

About Us

Co-founded in 2023 by Joe Laws and Grant Verstandig , Trase Systems is AI, Uncomplicated. Trase empowers enterprise leaders to harness the full potential of AI without the associated complexity and risks. We are an end-to-end solution for deploying, managing, and optimizing AI in the enterprise. Our platform specializes in bridging the “last mile” of AI adoption, unlocking AI's full potential while driving efficiency and significant cost savings. Trase is at the forefront of AI Agent innovation, topping the Hugging Face GAIA Leaderboard for Generalized AI Assistants, ahead of industry giants such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI. We are leveraging our cutting-edge technologies to develop mission-critical agentic applications in complex industries such as Healthcare, Oil & Gas, and National Security.

About the Role

As a Senior or Staff DevOps Engineer at Trase, you will build, deploy, and operate the infrastructure supporting Red Cell Federal and Red Cell Partners’ incubations and portfolio companies. You will join Trase's dedicated RCF/RCP support team, with a strong focus on federal, government, and national security programs.

Red Cell Partners is an investment and incubation firm that builds and supports technology companies, including Trase. Red Cell Federal is our federal-focused partner within that ecosystem. This role helps RCF and other RCP partner companies adopt and operate Trase OS in their own environments.

This is a hands-on engineering role spanning partner onboarding, Kubernetes, infrastructure as code, secure releases, observability, and production support. You will work directly with partner engineers, Trase's dedicated software engineers and TPM, Platform Engineering, and GRC to turn requirements into validated deployments and dependable operations.

The level will reflect the candidate's experience and demonstrated scope. Senior engineers will independently deliver and support complex partner deployments. Staff engineers will also lead architecture across partner environments, establish reusable standards, and mentor engineers.

Why this Role is Needed

RCF and RCP companies need secure, repeatable deployments across commercial and government cloud, private networks, and on-premises infrastructure. Their requirements span installation, integrations, hardening, upgrades, incident response, and ongoing vulnerability remediation.

This role provides dedicated engineering ownership from environment readiness through sustained operations. You will make deployments easier to install, validate, upgrade, and support, while turning recurring partner needs into reusable capabilities with Trase's platform team.

What You'll Do

• Build and operate RCF/RCP partner environments across AWS, Azure, GCP, and customer-controlled or on-premises infrastructure, adapting to each program's access, networking, and security requirements.
• Package and validate Trase OS services and dependencies using Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, and approved registries. Maintain complete, versioned image inventories, release manifests, and image digests so partner deliveries contain the required artifacts.
• Create reusable infrastructure-as-code modules, cluster bootstrap automation, and CI/CD or GitOps workflows using Terraform, Pulumi, Argo CD, or comparable tools.
• Prepare and validate networking, IAM, secrets, certificates, storage, registries, and model-provider connectivity. Support restricted-network and disconnected deployment patterns where required, in partnership with application engineers.
• Remove or abstract cloud-specific dependencies that block partner deployments. Validate representative agent workflows end to end, including service integrations, authentication, model access, and persistent state.
• Own technical triage and troubleshooting for partner deployment and production issues across application services, Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, and networks. Coordinate fixes and escalations with named owners and verify resolution with partners.
• Deliver tested releases, patches, and upgrades with automated validation gates, version compatibility checks, smoke tests, rollback procedures, and clear release notes. Confirm the deployed artifacts match the approved release.
• Operate metrics, logs, traces, audit logging, dashboards, alerts, and SLOs for partner environments. Support incident response, recovery, capacity planning, and reliability improvements.
• Partner with GRC and RCF security teams on container hardening, vulnerability scanning, CVE remediation, SBOMs, and engineering evidence for applicable STIG, RMF/ATO, and impact-level requirements. Verify fixes through rescanning and deployment validation; coordinate exceptions and approvals with security owners.
• Support sustainment of federal deployments, including Second Front where applicable, through patching, image updates, configuration changes, and ongoing security remediation within agreed Trase/partner responsibilities.
• Maintain deployment guides, environment inventories, operational runbooks, and troubleshooting documentation. Provide partner onboarding, knowledge transfer, and operational handoffs with clear prerequisites, access boundaries, and support ownership.

Technical leadership

• Lead infrastructure and reliability decisions across RCF/RCP engagements, keeping partner-specific requirements aligned with Trase's shared architecture.
• Set practical standards for secure releases, production readiness, observability, and support handoffs across partner environments.
• Work with the TPM, Product, GRC, and partner teams to clarify requirements, validate acceptance criteria, estimate work, and surface risks and dependencies before making commitments.
• Turn recurring partner deployment and support needs into reusable automation and platform improvements.
• Mentor engineers and partner teams, document decisions, and reduce reliance on individual experts for ongoing operations.

Required Qualifications

• U.S. citizenship is required.
• 10+ years of software, platform, infrastructure, SRE, or DevOps engineering experience, including hands‑on ownership of production systems.
• Deep hands‑on experience with Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, and production cluster operations.
• Strong experience with Helm and infrastructure as code, such as Terraform or Pulumi, including reusable modules, state management, testing, and change review.
• Hands‑on infrastructure experience with at least two of AWS, Azure, and GCP, including compute, networking, storage, identity, and managed services.
• Experience deploying and operating software in customer‑controlled, private‑cloud, hybrid‑cloud, or on‑premises environments, including adapting cloud‑native products for these deployment models.
• Strong understanding of networking, DNS, ingress, load balancing, certificates, IAM, secrets management, persistent storage, and service‑to‑service security.
• Experience operating CI/CD or GitOps systems for releases, upgrades, and rollbacks, plus observability and incident response for production services.
• Strong software engineering and automation skills in Python, Go, TypeScript, or a similar language, with the ability to work across application and infrastructure layers.
• Experience hardening production infrastructure and container images, investigating vulnerability findings, and delivering validated security fixes with security teams.
• Strong partner‑facing communication and troubleshooting skills, with ownership of technical issues from initial report through validated resolution and operational handoff.
• Demonstrated experience using AI‑assisted coding and engineering tools to accelerate development, infrastructure automation, troubleshooting, operational analysis, or incident investigation.

Strongly Preferred

• Prior SRE, DevOps, or infrastructure engineering experience supporting national security, defense, federal agencies, or other government programs.
• An active U.S. government security clearance.
• Experience operating in restricted‑network, disconnected, regulated, or security‑sensitive environments.
• Hands‑on familiarity with STIG hardening, NIST controls, FedRAMP, RMF/ATO evidence, or DoD IL4/IL5/IL6 deployment requirements, as applicable to assigned programs.
• Experience with government cloud infrastructure, including AWS GovCloud, and federal deployment platforms such as Second Front/Game Warden.
• Experience with software supply‑chain security, SBOMs, artifact signing, FIPS‑enabled components, Harbor, or policy as code.
• Experience supporting long‑running, stateful, data‑intensive, AI/ML, or GPU‑enabled workloads.
• Customer‑facing, partner engineering, or forward‑deployed experience supporting multiple organizations and transferring operational knowledge.

Up to 20% travel may be required.

Salary Range: $180,000-$240,000 + bonus + equity. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors.

For full-time roles only

• Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement withstrong performanceas the firm grows
• 100% employer paid, comprehensive health care including medical, dental, and vision for you and your family.
• Paid maternity and paternity for 14 weeks at employees' normal pay.
• Unlimited PTO, with management approval.
• Opportunities for professional development and continued learning.
• Optional 401K, FSA, and equity incentives available.
• Mental health benefits are available through Tara Mind .

We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer: You’ll receive consideration for employment without regard to race, sex, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, or on the basis of disability.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey.Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in Trase Systems’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service‑connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three‑year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.