Senior/Staff DevOps Engineer, Federal Software

Frontdoor Defense; Seattle, McLean (WA, VA); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Trase is seeking a Senior or Staff DevOps Engineer for federal deployments. You will lead deployment automation for partner environments and ensure secure, compliant operations across cloud and on‑premises.

In this role you will own Kubernetes, IaC, secure releases, observability, and production support for Red Cell Federal and Red Cell Partners' portfolios, collaborating with GRC, TPM, and platform teams to deliver validated deployments.

Qualifications

• U.S. citizenship is required.
• 10+ years of software, platform, infrastructure, SRE, or DevOps experience with hands-on production ownership.
• Deep hands-on experience with Linux, Docker, Kubernetes; production cluster operations.
• Strong experience with Helm and IaC (Terraform or Pulumi).
• Hands-on infra experience with at least two of AWS, Azure, GCP; on-premises or private cloud exposure.
• Experience deploying and operating software in customer-controlled or hybrid environments; secure, compliant deployments.

Responsibilities

• Build, deploy, and operate the infrastructure supporting federal programs.
• Lead deployment automation for partner environments and ensure secure, compliant operations.
• Work with partner engineers, TPM, Platform Engineering, and GRC to validate deployments.
• Own architecture decisions, reusable standards, and mentor engineers across projects.
• Manage cloud and on-premises deployments, including security, networking, and observability.
• Deliver secure releases with CI/CD or GitOps; maintain release notes and validation gates.

Skills

Linux

Docker

Kubernetes

Helm

Terraform

Pulumi

CI/CD

GitOps

Observability

SRE

Tools

Argo CD

Terraform

Job description

Senior/Staff DevOps Engineer, Federal - Remote Eligible

Lead deployment automation for federal partner environments and ensure secure, compliant operations

Location: Seattle, WashingtonMcLean, VirginiaCompensation: $180,000 - 240,000 USD / year

About The Role

Senior Or Staff DevOps Engineer

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.

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.

You’ll do the following:

• 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