Would you like to perform rewarding work while contributing to the success of an established, growing company? Navstar is an award-winning organization that has a proven track record of successfully providing IT services and solutions both as a prime and sub-contractor on mission-focused IT programs. Our employees are integral players in support of mission-critical programs focused on our National Security.
Role Description:
Navstar is seeking an experienced, hands-on DevOps / Platform Engineer to help build and operate an internally managed Platform as a Service (PaaS) within an AWS cloud environment. Built on Amazon EKS and supporting Kubernetes services, the platform will enable application teams to securely build, deploy, and operate their software. This is a working engineering role with a strong emphasis on writing, testing, and maintaining code. The selected candidate will develop infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, reusable deployment configurations, and developer tooling that make cloud adoption practical for application teams with little or no AWS or Kubernetes experience. The ideal candidate combines software engineering skills with experience operating cloud platforms. They will work directly with developers to onboard applications, resolve deployment challenges, and turn recurring manual tasks into reliable, reusable automation. Position Responsibilities
- Write, test, review, and maintain code that provisions infrastructure, configures platform services, automates application delivery, and supports day-to-day operations.
- Build and improve an internally operated PaaS using AWS, Amazon EKS, and supporting Kubernetes technologies.
- Onboard application teams with limited cloud experience through hands-on implementation, pairing, practical documentation, and reusable examples.
- Work with developers to assess application requirements and implement containerization, configuration management, secrets integration, health checks, resource settings, and deployment strategies.
- Develop reusable Infrastructure as Code modules, Helm charts, deployment templates, and self-service workflows that reduce the effort required to adopt the platform.
- Build and maintain CI/CD and GitOps workflows that automate builds, testing, security checks, artifact publishing, deployments, and rollbacks.
- Configure and integrate platform capabilities such as ingress, service-to-service networking, identity and access management, secrets management, and observability.
- Implement monitoring, logging, dashboards, and actionable alerts using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and CloudWatch; help application teams use them to diagnose problems.
- Troubleshoot issues across application code, containers, Kubernetes, networking, AWS services, and delivery pipelines, and implement durable fixes.
- Embed security controls and vulnerability remediation into platform code and delivery workflows in collaboration with security and cloud engineering teams.
- Maintain platform components through upgrades, configuration changes, and operational improvements, with appropriate testing and recovery procedures.
- Contribute to technical design decisions while remaining directly responsible for implementation, code reviews, documentation, and delivery.
Required Skills and Qualifications:
- To be eligible for this position you must hold an active TS/SCI clearance.
- Active TS/SCI U.S. Security Clearance.
- 10+ years of relevant experience in software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Associate degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT, or a related technical field.
- Strong hands-on programming experience with Python, Go, or another general-purpose language used to build automation and developer tooling, along with proficiency in shell scripting.
- Demonstrated experience developing and maintaining reusable automation as software, including version control, testing, code reviews, and documentation.
- Hands-on experience building, deploying, and troubleshooting workloads in AWS, including Amazon EKS.
- Strong practical experience with Docker and Kubernetes, including application deployments, services, configuration, secrets, networking, and workload troubleshooting.
- Experience writing and maintaining Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, CloudFormation, or comparable tools.
- Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, or similar tools.
- Ability to help application developers adopt unfamiliar cloud and Kubernetes practices through direct technical support, clear explanations, and working examples.
- Practical understanding of cloud identity and access management, networking, observability, and secure application delivery.
- Proven ability to diagnose problems across application and infrastructure boundaries and deliver code-based solutions.
- Ability to work 100% onsite in Sterling, VA, with up to 25% CONUS travel.
Desired Skills and Qualifications:
- Experience building or operating an internal developer platform or PaaS used by multiple application teams.
- Experience with Helm, Kustomize, and GitOps tools such as Argo CD or Flux.
- Experience configuring and troubleshooting Istio or another service mesh, including traffic management, mutual TLS, and service observability.
- Experience implementing application and platform observability using Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, or related tools.
- Experience integrating Kubernetes workloads with AWS services such as IAM, ECR, S3, RDS, Secrets Manager, and load balancing services.
- Familiarity with Java, Spring Boot, or similar enterprise application frameworks sufficient to support containerization, deployment, and troubleshooting.
- Experience implementing DevSecOps controls, container image scanning, dependency scanning, policy enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
- Experience supporting platforms in restricted or disconnected environments.
- AWS or Kubernetes certifications.
- Previous experience supporting IC or DoD programs and greenfield development efforts.
Pay Rate:
In compliance with Virginia's Equal Pay for Equal Work law, the annual base salary range for this position is $190,000 - $240,000. This range represents the base pay for this role and is provided in accordance with Maryland’s requirements to disclose compensation in job postings. Please note that actual compensation may vary based on factors such as (but not limited to) the scope and responsibilities of the role, the candidate’s qualifications, experience, education, skills, internal equity, and market conditions. In addition to base salary, candidates hired into this position may be eligible for a hiring bonus of $10,000.00, subject to applicable contingencies and Navstar policy. About Navstar For 20 years Navstar has provided high-quality Innovative Technology Services and Solutions throughout the Intelligence Community. We would not have achieved the success we have without the best AllStar team; this is not just a place to work, Navstar is a community. At Navstar everything we do revolves around listening to both our customers and employees, delivering the results they expect, and being a trusted partner as both a prime and subcontractor. We have a proven track record of successfully providing innovative technology services and solutions on highly mission-focused programs; all while enjoying what we do at the same time. Security is our priority; together, we will make the nation a safer place. Benefits at Navstar
- Highly Competitive Health Care Premiums, including 100% employer paid for employee
- Flexible Spending Accounts for Medical and Dependent Care
- Generous PTO and Federal Holiday Paid Leave
- Employer Paid STD/LTD
- Employer Paid Life Insurance
- 401K plan and Employer Match
- Referral and Opportunity Referral Programs
- Professional Development Assistance
EOE/M/F/Vet/Disabled Navstar, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, religious beliefs, national origin, disability, U.S. veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristics under federal, state or local law.