Sr DevOps Engineer

Sierra Nevada Corporation; Lone Tree (CO); Hybrid; USD 143,000 - 197,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision plans

401(k) with 150% match up to 6%

Life insurance

3 weeks paid time off

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is seeking a Senior DevOps Engineer to lead and optimize our CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure. You will drive automation, IaC adoption, and security across development, staging, and production, while mentoring the DevOps team and aligning initiatives with business goals.

You will guide platform reliability, incident response, and governance, and play a key role in advancing GitOps workflows and observability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, IT, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 8+ years in DevOps or related roles with cloud and CI/CD ownership.
• Proficiency with Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, or similar tools.
• Strong hands-on with AWS, Azure, or GCP and Kubernetes.
• Extensive scripting in Python, Bash, or PowerShell.
• In-depth IaC experience with Terraform; Salt/Ansible optional.
• Experience designing GitOps workflows with ArgoCD or Flux.
• Security, compliance, and incident-response focus for production systems.

Responsibilities

• Oversee and optimize CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure.
• Ensure reliability, security, and scalability of systems.
• Lead automation and infrastructure-as-code initiatives.
• Collaborate with executives to align DevOps with business goals.
• Mentor DevOps team and promote best practices.
• Define platform security, incident response, and runbooks.
• Design/operate Kubernetes clusters across environments.
• Drive continuous improvement and industry-standard practices.
• Represent SNC at industry events and forums.

Skills

CI/CD

Cloud platforms

Scripting

Kubernetes

Infrastructure as code

GitOps

Linux admin

Monitoring/observability

Incident response

Security/compliance

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

CloudFormation

ARM Templates

Chef

Puppet

ArgoCD

Flux

AWS CLI/Azure CLI

Kubernetes tooling

Job description

Do you have an eye for detail and a passion for developing innovation solutions? Join our team! As a Senior DevOps Engineer, you will be a strategic leader responsible for overseeing and optimizing the organization’s DevOps processes. You will ensure the reliability, security, and scalability of our Continuous Integration/Continuous Development (CI/CD) pipelines and cloud infrastructure while mentoring the DevOps team and driving the adoption of industry best practices.

As SNC's corporate team, we provide the company and its business areas with strategic direction and business support spanning executive management, finance and accounting, operations, human resources, legal, IT, information security, facilities, marketing, and communications.

Responsibilities

• Oversee and optimize the organization’s CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure.
• Ensure the reliability, security, and scalability of all systems.
• Lead the implementation of automation and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Collaborate with executive leadership to align DevOps initiatives with business goals.
• Mentor and provide technical leadership to the DevOps team.
• Develop and enforce robust security and compliance policies.
• Drive continuous improvement and innovation in DevOps practices.
• Represent the organization at industry conferences and forums.
• Design, deploy, and operate Kubernetes clusters across development, staging, and production environments.
• Define and enforce platform SLOs, maintain error budgets, and lead incident response, including on-call rotations, runbooks, and post-mortems.

Qualifications You Must Have

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
• 8+ years of experience in DevOps or related role.
• Higher level relevant degree may substitute for experience.
• Relevant experience can be considered as a substitute for the required educational qualifications.
• In the absence of a degree, a minimum of 12 years of related experience is required.
• Expert proficiency with CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD).
• Extensive experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Strong scripting and automation skills in languages such as Python or Bash.
• Experience with container orchestration tools (e.g., Kubernetes).
• Experience with Identity and Role Management in a cloud environment.
• Experience with private networking in cloud and hybrid environments.
• 5+ years in Azure or AWS.
• Infrastructure as Cloud: Terraform (preferred), Ansible, Cloud Formation, ARM Templates, Chef, Puppet.
• CI/CD Pipelines (YAML Based): AWS, Azure, GIT Hub.
• Scripting: Bash, PowerShell, Python (Boto3), AWS CLI, or Azure CLI.
• Experience owning the full lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters, including upgrades, scaling, and multi-environment topology design.
• Experience designing GitOps-based deployment workflows using tools such as ArgoCD or Flux.
• Strong Linux systems administration background, including defining OS baseline and hardening standards.
• Experience designing observability architecture and owning monitoring, logging, and alerting platforms (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana).
• Experience leading production incident response, including on-call rotation leadership, runbook development, and post-incident review processes.
• Experience establishing Infrastructure-as-Code standards and governance across a platform, not just writing individual modules.

Qualifications We Prefer

• Master's degree in a related field.
• Experience in the Aerospace and Defense industry.
• Certification in cloud technologies (e.g., AWS Certified DevOps Engineer).
• Azure Government or AWS Government.
• Experience defining Container Network Interface (CNI) strategy for Kubernetes clusters.
• Experience running chaos engineering practices to validate system resilience.
• Experience defining multi‑cloud infrastructure strategy.
• Experience setting reliability targets and error budgets across multiple teams.
• Experience defining observability standards across a platform or organization.
• Experience owning a container registry platform, including image lifecycle and security policy.
• Experience owning audit readiness and compliance evidence collection (e.g., CMMC or similar frameworks).

Essential Functions

• Ability to work on a computer for extended periods.
• Frequent communication with team members and stakeholders.
• Ability to work in an office or hybrid environment.
• Occasional travel may be required.
• Must be able to lift up to 10 lbs occasionally.
• Design and manage complex infrastructure solutions, leveraging cloud services, containerization, and orchestration tools to support scalable and secure environments.
• Mentor junior DevOps engineers, conduct code and process reviews, and promote best practices in DevOps methodologies to maintain high standards of performance and security.
• Collaborate with development, QA, security, and operations teams to ensure seamless integration and delivery of applications and services, fostering a culture of collaboration and shared responsibility.

Application Period

This posting will be open for application for a minimum of 5 days and may be extended based on business needs.

Estimated Starting Salary Range

$143,487.14 - $197,294.82.

Compensation Details

Compensation varies depending on a wide array of factors, such as candidates' key skills, relevant work experience, and education/training/certifications. The disclosed range estimate may be adjusted for any applicable geographic differential associated with the location at which the position may be filled.

Benefits Package

SNC offers a generous benefit package, including medical, dental, and vision plans, 401(k) with 150% match up to 6%, life insurance, 3 weeks paid time off, tuition reimbursement, and more.

Security Clearance

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a Secret U.S. Security Clearance. U.S. Citizenship status is required as this position needs an active U.S. Security Clearance for employment. Non-U.S. citizens may not be eligible to obtain a security clearance. The Department of Defense Consolidated Adjudications Facility (DoD CAF), a federal government agency, handles the adjudicative aspects of the security clearance eligibility process for industry applicants. Adjudicative factors which affect the outcome of the eligibility determination include, but are not limited to, allegiance to the U.S., foreign influence, foreign preference, criminal conduct, security violations and illegal drug use. Learn more about the background check process for Security Clearances.

About the Company

SNC is a global leader in aerospace and national security committed to moving the American Dream forward. We’re known and respected for our mission and execution focus, agility, and disruptive and rapid innovation. We provide leading edge technologies and transformative solutions that support our nation’s most critical security needs. If you are mission-focused, thrive in collaborative environments, and want to make our country stronger with state‑of the art technologies that safeguard freedom, join our team! SNC is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to an environment free of discrimination. Employment decisions are made based on merit without regard to race, color, age, religion, sex, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran or other characteristics protected by law. SNC is a trusted global leader in aerospace and national security. Our innovative solutions enable connected protection through command, control and communications systems, as well as ISR, cyber, electromagnetic spectrum management, and other high capabilities for systems across all domains – sea, land, air, space and cyber. As a longstanding leader in defense technology, SNC is the optimum intersection of commercial, defense and non-traditional contractors. We are one of the only privately owned mid‑tier A&D contractors and we pride ourselves on our ability to invest early and often to ensure mission success on or ahead of schedule. It’s part of our mission to always stay one step ahead; working on solutions today to solve the problems of tomorrow. Founded in 1963, SNC is owned by Chairwoman Eren Ozmen and CEO Fatih Ozmen.