Staff DevOps Engineer, Federal/National Security

Red Cell Partners; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health coverage for you and family

Parental leave

Unlimited PTO

Professional development

Equity incentives

Mental health benefits

On-call allowances

Job summary

Red Cell Partners is building the federal deployment platform from the ground up, delivering secure CI/CD, software promotion, and infrastructure automation for unclassified to classified environments.

You will own deployment pipelines, participate in ATO activities, and collaborate with software teams to ensure reliable operations in restricted environments. This role requires hands-on engineering leadership and a builder mentality.

Qualifications

• Active U.S. government Secret clearance or higher. An active Top Secret clearance is preferred.
• Professional experience in DevOps, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, release engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Experience building or substantially redesigning CI/CD and deployment systems.
• Experience deploying software into government, defense, regulated, disconnected, air-gapped, or restricted environments.
• Strong understanding of software delivery, artifact promotion, environment isolation, access controls, and operational troubleshooting.
• Experience with GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Bitbucket Pipelines, Jenkins, or comparable tooling.
• Experience with containers, Kubernetes, Helm, or related orchestration and packaging technologies.
• Experience with infrastructure as code and configuration automation.
• Ability to script and automate in languages such as Python, Bash, or Go.
• Strong communication skills across software engineering, security, compliance, and customer stakeholders.
• Builder mentality and genuine interest in creating systems from zero.

Responsibilities

• Design and build Red Cell Federal’s CI/CD and software promotion pipelines from the ground up.
• Establish secure processes for promoting software across unclassified, controlled, and classified environments.
• Support ATO-related technical activities for software agents and customer deployments.
• Build repeatable deployment, release, rollback, monitoring, and troubleshooting capabilities.
• Deploy and operate software in government and customer‑controlled environments.
• Diagnose issues in environments where logs, data, or direct access cannot be shared broadly.
• Partner with software and platform engineering teams to isolate problems and deliver corrected artifacts.
• Define infrastructure-as-code, configuration management, secrets management, and artifact‑handling practices.
• Help establish operational and compliance practices appropriate for federal work.
• Evaluate tools and architecture based on security, reliability, portability, and mission requirements.
• Document systems and processes so deployments can scale across customers and environments.
• Serve as a hands‑on technical owner while the federal engineering organization grows.

Skills

Automation

SRE mindset

Communication

Decision making

Tools

GitLab CI/CD

GitHub Actions

Kubernetes

Terraform

Ansible

Job description

About Us

Red Cell Partners is an incubation firm building and investing in rapidly scalable technology-led companies that are bringing revolutionary advancements to market in three distinct practice areas: healthcare, cyber, and national security. United by a shared sense of duty and deep belief in the power of innovation, Red Cell is developing powerful tools and solutions to address our Nation’s most pressing problems.

About The Role

We are looking for a hands‑on DevOps Engineer to build the secure delivery and deployment foundation for Red Cell Federal. You will start with a largely blank slate. Your initial focus will be designing and implementing CI/CD, software promotion, infrastructure automation, and operational processes for software deployed across unclassified, controlled, and classified environments. You will also contribute to the technical work required to pursue and maintain federal authorization requirements. As customer deployments grow, you will become a critical connection point between our software teams and restricted customer environments. In situations where other engineers cannot access the environment or receive its logs, you will diagnose issues, coordinate fixes, and safely deploy corrected artifacts. This role is well suited to someone who has built DevOps systems before, has strong technical judgment, and wants genuine ownership rather than a mature platform to maintain.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build Red Cell Federal’s CI/CD and software promotion pipelines from the ground up.
• Establish secure processes for promoting software across unclassified, controlled, and classified environments.
• Support ATO-related technical activities for software agents and customer deployments.
• Build repeatable deployment, release, rollback, monitoring, and troubleshooting capabilities.
• Deploy and operate software in government and customer‑controlled environments.
• Diagnose issues in environments where logs, data, or direct access cannot be shared broadly.
• Partner with software and platform engineering teams to isolate problems and deliver corrected artifacts.
• Define infrastructure-as-code, configuration management, secrets management, and artifact‑handling practices.
• Help establish operational and compliance practices appropriate for federal work.
• Evaluate tools and architecture based on security, reliability, portability, and mission requirements.
• Document systems and processes so deployments can scale across customers and environments.
• Serve as a hands‑on technical owner while the federal engineering organization grows.

About You

• Active U.S. government Secret clearance or higher. An active Top Secret clearance is preferred.
• Professional experience in DevOps, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, release engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• Experience building or substantially redesigning CI/CD and deployment systems.
• Experience deploying software into government, defense, regulated, disconnected, air-gapped, or otherwise restricted environments.
• Strong understanding of software delivery, artifact promotion, environment isolation, access controls, and operational troubleshooting.
• Experience with GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Bitbucket Pipelines, Jenkins, or comparable tooling.
• Experience with containers, Kubernetes, Helm, or related orchestration and packaging technologies.
• Experience with infrastructure as code and configuration automation.
• Ability to script and automate in languages such as Python, Bash, or Go.
• Ability to make sound technical decisions with incomplete requirements.
• Strong communication skills across software engineering, security, compliance, and customer stakeholders.
• Builder mentality and genuine interest in creating systems from zero.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with IL4, IL5, IL6, classified, or cross‑domain deployment workflows.
• Experience contributing to an ATO or continuous authorization process.
• Familiarity with NIST, RMF, FedRAMP, CMMC, STIGs, or related federal requirements.

Why Join?

• Build the federal deployment platform from its earliest stage.
• Own foundational technical decisions with meaningful autonomy.
• Work alongside strong engineers, experienced advisors, and a growing federal go‑to‑market organization.
• Solve difficult deployment and infrastructure problems that do not exist in ordinary commercial environments.
• Join a high‑ownership team that intends to move quickly and operate outside established playbooks.

Salary Range:

$170,000-240,000 + bonus + equity. This represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience, skills, and other factors.

Our Red Cell Partners Benefits (may differ for each incubation):

• For full‑time roles
• Career track opportunity with potential for rapid advancement with strong performance as 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.
• Cost effective GLP-1 solutions available through Crux.

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.