Staff DevOps Engineer—CI/CD Automation & Cloud

Shield AI; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 150,000 - 220,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Benefits

Equity

Job summary

Shield AI is seeking an engineer for the HMS DevOps/DevEx team to automate tool workflows and CI/CD pipelines powering Hivemind development. You will integrate GitLab, Jira, and Confluence, optimize pipelines, and secure cloud testing environments.

The role emphasizes automation, reproducibility, and security across Linux, Docker, and modern DevOps tooling, with opportunities in Azure Gov Cloud and on-premise integrations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience building, maintaining, and scaling enterprise CI/CD systems, with deep expertise in GitLab CI/CD pipelines and runner infrastructure.
• Experience writing scripts (Bash, Python) and using webhooks/APIs to automate and integrate tools (Jira, Confluence, GitLab).
• Hands-on experience with Docker and multi-stage builds, and package managers such as Conan, Poetry, or Nix.
• Experience deploying workloads in cloud environments (Azure Gov Cloud or AWS) with secure software practices.
• Knowledge of secret management and identity providers (Active Directory, Entra ID).
• Strong Linux administration, networking, and troubleshooting skills.
• Active U.S. SECRET security clearance (U.S. citizenship required).

Responsibilities

• Write, configure, and maintain robust GitLab CI/CD pipelines and runner environments for C++, Python, and Node.js projects, ensuring fast compilation and test execution.
• Build, test, and deploy automated tooling integrations, webhook dispatchers, and state-change scripts to orchestrate release workflows across GitLab, Jira, and Confluence.
• Write custom Python or Bash extensions for our pi-gov harness, configuring secure, audited routing rules and container configurations.
• Deploy, scale, and configure the Forge simulation and test orchestrator in Azure Gov Cloud, optimizing runner autoscaling and cloud compute usage.
• Maintain, configure, and secure Artifactory package registries, implementing secure container builds via BuildKit, secret injection, and Entra ID integration.
• Collaborate with development teams to migrate legacy build systems to reproducible Nix environments, writing derivations and flakes.
• Troubleshoot pipeline failures, build issues, registry access problems, and system drift across environments.

Skills

CI/CD

Scripting

APIs & Webhooks

Linux administration

Networking

Security clearance

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE or related field

Tools

GitLab CI/CD

GitLab Runner

Jira

Confluence

Docker

Conan

Poetry

Nix

Azure Gov Cloud

AWS

Artifactory

Entra ID

Active Directory

Job description

Shield AI is seeking an engineer for the HMS DevOps/DevEx team to automate tool workflows and CI/CD pipelines powering Hivemind development. You will integrate GitLab, Jira, and Confluence, optimize pipelines, and secure cloud testing environments.

The role emphasizes automation, reproducibility, and security across Linux, Docker, and modern DevOps tooling, with opportunities in Azure Gov Cloud and on-premise integrations.