Tacoma, Washington - DevOps Engineer (Active Secret Clearance)

Striveworks; Tacoma (WA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/dental/vision

Voluntary life & disability

HSA & FSA

401(k) plan

Unlimited PTO

Parental leave

Job summary

Striveworks is seeking a DevOps Engineer to sustain an AI platform across cloud and on‑prem environments, interfacing with customers to tailor automation and deployments.

The role requires 3–5+ years in DevOps/SRE, strong Terraform/Ansible skills, and US citizenship with an active security clearance. Hybrid on‑site work at Joint Base Lewis–McChord in Tacoma, WA with up to 25% travel.

Qualifications

• 3–5+ years hands-on experience in software, DevOps, SRE, or systems engineering.
• Customer-centric technical leadership to gather requirements and guide cross-functional teams.
• Production Kubernetes deployment and diagnostics in K8s with Helm and kubectl.
• Observability and monitoring using Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry for reliability.
• Infrastructure‑as‑code with Terraform/Ansible to manage VMs and containers.
• Programming in Bash and/or Python for automation.
• Linux systems expertise (RHEL, Ubuntu, Alpine).
• Active Secret (or above) US security clearance.
• US citizenship is required for the role.

Responsibilities

• Partner with users to translate mission requirements into technical solutions.
• Build and maintain IaC to deploy Kubernetes clusters across environments.
• Troubleshoot complex integrations and log dashboards to unblock customers.
• Provide field insights to product teams and automate installation frictions.
• Lead software deployments on networks including CUI and classified environments.

Skills

Kubernetes

Observability

Scripting (Bash/Python)

Linux mastery

Security clearance

US citizenship

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Helm

kubectl

Prometheus

Grafana

Job description

Build, Deploy, and Maintain AI for an Unpredictable World

Striveworks helps organizations harness the power of artificial intelligence to solve real-world national security and business challenges by serving as the command center between data, models, and business outcomes. Founded by data scientists and engineers, Striveworks set out to make the journey from deployment to ongoing optimization simple and effective.

With Striveworks, organizations aren’t just deploying AI—they’re building systems that remain reliable, adaptable, and ready to scale in an unpredictable world. Mission‑critical operations require models that perform where they’re deployed, scale as workloads grow, and adapt rapidly as AI capabilities advance. Striveworks meets these demands, increasing reliability and performance while lowering costs—and enabling confident, data‑driven decision‑making in dynamic environments.

The Role

As a DevOps Engineer supporting operations on site at Joint Base Lewis–McChord in Tacoma, WA, you are the tactical edge of our engineering team. You aren’t just maintaining a platform; you play a key role in the technical success of a project. You will interface directly with customers to understand their unique constraints—such as restricted networks, hardware limitations, or urgent operational requirements—and tailor our automation and deployment strategies to move the needle for them.

You will be responsible for maintaining the end‑to‑end life cycle of our AI platform across a diverse architectural landscape—including remotely accessible cloud environments and on‑premises hardware. You’ll thrive in this role if you enjoy the challenge of debugging complex Kubernetes clusters where connectivity is a luxury, not a given. You are someone who can navigate the unique constraints of local hardware today and write the automation that ensures seamless, reliable performance across the customer’s hybrid stack tomorrow.

This position offers a hybrid/on‑site work environment at our customer sites at Joint Base Lewis–McChord in Tacoma, WA. You will be expected to travel up to 25% of the time.

Your day‑to‑day will include:

• Customer‑centric engineering: Partnering directly with users and stakeholders to translate mission requirements into technical solutions, ensuring that Striveworks’ AI capabilities are fully integrated into their existing workflows.
• Tactical deployment and automation: Building and maintaining infrastructure‑as‑code (IaC) to deploy custom Kubernetes clusters across diverse environments, (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP, and on‑prem).
• Integration and troubleshooting: Acting as the primary technical point of contact for troubleshooting complex integrations, you’ll be deep in the logs, debugging containerized microservices and network and application configurations to unblock the customer.
• Product evolution: Feeding field insights back to our core product teams. You are the eyes and ears of the engineering org, identifying friction points in the installation process and automating them away.
• Mission execution: Leading software deployments on unclassified, CUI, and classified networks, ensuring that our AI remains reliable, adaptable, and ready to scale in dynamic environments.

The Right Fit

In addition to the specific skills and expertise detailed below, we are looking for individuals who share our values. Sharing a set of values allows us to move at the speed of trust.

Collectively, we value a high‑trust work environment where people respect each other and use candor kindly and constructively. We value work that intersects passion and perseverance, we geek out about the potential of our contributions, and we find joy in working hard on things that matter. Finally, we value taking ownership, having agency, and feeling individual responsibility for collective results.

Here’s what we are looking for:

• 3–5+ years of hands‑on experience in software, DevOps, site reliability, or systems engineering
• Customer‑centric technical leadership that combines deep technical expertise with executive presence to lead cross‑functional requirement gathering, manage professional incident response across diverse environments, and champion organizational interests to external stakeholders
• Production Kubernetes: Expertise in deploying and diagnosing microservices within K8s (using Helm and kubectl)
• Observability and monitoring: Experience with comprehensive observability solutions (metrics, logs, and traces) using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry to ensure system reliability and performance visibility
• Application assurance: Ability to design and execute testing strategies to validate application functionality, diagnose issues, and perform root cause analysis—implementing effective long‑term fixes to improve stability and performance
• Infrastructure‑as‑code: Deep proficiency in Terraform, Ansible, or similar tools to manage virtual machines (VMs) and containerized services
• Programming proficiency: Strong scripting and coding skills in Bash and/or Python for building custom automation and tooling
• Linux mastery: Ability to manage and rapidly troubleshoot Linux systems (RHEL, Ubuntu, Alpine)
• Active Secret (or above) US security clearance
• Due to the nature of this role, candidates must have US citizenship

The Wish List

We are very interested in candidates who possess the above qualifications, and we appreciate and consider the addition of:

• Experience with DOD networking, tools, infrastructure, security requirements, and policies
• Proficiency with US federal information system security policies, including Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs), NIST SP 800-171, NIST SP 800-53, CMMC, and ICD 503
• Experience with software deployments to on‑premises and cloud‑based unclassified, CUI, and classified networks within the DOD
• Experience with DevSecOps/DevOps and Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) for the administration and deployment of GPU‑enabled servers
• Experience deploying or maintaining Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects
• Experience with network‑attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) technologies
• Experience with Kubernetes and cloud‑native applications and services in denied, disrupted, intermittent, and limited (DDIL) impact environments

The anticipated base pay range for this position is$160,000 to $190,000/year. Striveworks’ total compensation package includes a competitive base salary, equity grants, and cash bonuses.

The Benefits

• Medical/dental/vision insurance
• Voluntary life, long‑term disability, accident, and hospital indemnity insurance
• HSA and FSA (including dependent care FSA) plans
• 401(k) plan
• Unlimited PTO
• Paid parental leave

Check us out on Built In!

Striveworks is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, belief, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity or expression), national origin, social or ethnic origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non‑merit factors. Striveworks will not tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind.

If you require assistance or a reasonable accommodation in the application process, please contact Operations at [e-mail].

In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete an employment eligibility verification form upon hire.

Striveworks is a participating employer in the E-Verify program.