Senior Cloud Operations Engineer

Company Overview

Pantheon Data (a Kenific Holding company) is a private, small business based in the Washington, DC, area. Pantheon Data was founded in 2011, initially providing acquisition and supply chain management services to the US Coast Guard. Our service offerings have grown in the past ten years, including infrastructure resiliency, contact center operations, information technology, software engineering, program management, strategic communications, engineering, and cybersecurity. We have also grown our customer base to include commercial clients. The company has used this experience to expand our service offerings to other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Defense (DoD), and other Federal Civilian Agencies.

Position Overview

Pantheon Data is seeking a Senior Cloud Operations Engineer to build, run, and continuously improve the AWS GovCloud infrastructure that hosts our ML-enabled workloads and applications for federal clients. You will own the cloud foundation, from multi-account structure and networking to compute, data services, observability, backup and recovery, and cost, and keep it reliable, well documented, and ready for FedRAMP High and DoD IL4/IL5 workloads.

This role owns the infrastructure and its day-to-day operation. You will partner closely with the DevSecOps Engineer, who owns CI/CD and Kubernetes delivery, and the Cloud Security Engineer, who sets security standards and monitors controls: you build and operate the platform those standards apply to. Successful candidates can walk through production environments they have personally built and operated, including the architecture, how they monitored it, the incidents they handled, and what they automated to make it better.

Responsibilities

• Cloud Foundation: Build and maintain a multi-account AWS GovCloud organization, including landing zone, account vending, and baseline configuration, using Terraform with consistent tagging, naming, and environment separation.
• Networking: Design and operate VPCs, subnets, Transit Gateway, Route 53, load balancing, private VPC endpoints, and restricted-egress connectivity; troubleshoot connectivity and DNS across accounts and environments.
• Platform Services: Provision and operate core services such as EC2, Auto Scaling, Lambda, S3, and RDS/Aurora PostgreSQL, and manage Amazon Bedrock quotas and capacity; provide the network and compute foundation that the DevSecOps team's EKS clusters run on.
• Observability and On-Call: Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and dashboards against defined service levels; participate in the on-call rotation; lead response to infrastructure incidents and write blameless post-incident reviews.
• Patching and Configuration: Maintain hardened, STIG-compliant machine images and automate patching and configuration management with AWS Systems Manager or equivalent tooling to meet vulnerability remediation timelines.
• Backup and Disaster Recovery: Design, automate, and regularly test backup, restore, and disaster recovery procedures against defined RPO/RTO targets, including cross-region recovery within GovCloud.
• Cost and Capacity Management: Track and optimize cloud spend and capacity through budgets, rightsizing, commitment planning, and cost allocation reporting.
• Operational Excellence: Run change management for infrastructure, maintain runbooks and architecture documentation, automate repetitive operational work, and provide operational evidence for ATO and continuous monitoring.

Required Skills and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field from an accredited university, or equivalent professional experience.
• 7+ years of hands-on experience in cloud infrastructure, systems engineering, or site reliability engineering, including 3+ years operating production AWS environments.
• Proficiency in Terraform for building and maintaining production infrastructure: modular design, state management, and multi-environment promotion.
• Strong AWS networking experience: VPC design, routing, Transit Gateway or peering, DNS, load balancing, and private connectivity.
• Hands-on experience operating core AWS compute, storage, and database services in production.
• Experience building monitoring, logging, and alerting, and responding to production incidents as part of an on-call rotation.
• Linux system administration experience, including patch management and configuration management at scale.
• Scripting proficiency in Python or Bash for operational automation.
• Experience planning and testing backup, restore, and disaster recovery.
• Experience with Git-based workflows, code review, and CI/CD for infrastructure changes.
• Clear written communication, including runbooks, architecture documentation, and incident reviews.
• Ability to work effectively remotely in cross-functional teams.
• Ability to meet deadlines and produce quality work.
• Proficient in Microsoft Suite software including Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint, and PowerPoint.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience operating AWS GovCloud or other regulated environments supporting FedRAMP High or DoD IL4/IL5 workloads.
• Experience building multi-account AWS organizations with AWS Control Tower, Account Factory for Terraform, or similar landing zone tooling.
• Experience maintaining STIG- or CIS-hardened images and meeting vulnerability remediation timelines in a compliance-driven environment.
• AWS certifications such as SysOps Administrator, Solutions Architect, or Advanced Networking.
• FinOps experience with cost allocation, showback or chargeback, and Savings Plans or reserved capacity management.
• Familiarity with Amazon EKS operations and the infrastructure Kubernetes depends on.
• Experience supporting AI/ML infrastructure, such as GPU instances, Amazon Bedrock quotas and provisioned throughput, or high-throughput data storage.
• Experience with observability tools such as CloudWatch, Grafana, Prometheus, OpenSearch, or Datadog.

Clearance Requirements

Applicants selected will be subject to a security investigation and may need to meet eligibility requirements. Candidates must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Secret clearance; an active Secret clearance is preferred.

Work Location: Reston, VA - Remote

• Our company prioritizes the benefits of flexibility and collaboration, whether that happens in person or remotely.
• If the position is remote or hybrid, you may periodically work from a Pantheon Data office location or client site.
• If this position is assigned to a Pantheon Data office location or client site, you'll work with colleagues and clients in person, as needed for specific client requirements.

Interview Requirement: Candidates who are local to the area should be prepared to participate in an in-person interview as part of the selection process. Candidates outside the local area may be considered for a virtual interview.

Compensation

The salary range for this position is $82,000 - $190,000. This is not, however, a guarantee of compensation or salary. Rather, salary will be set based on experience, geographic location and possibly contractual requirements and could fall outside of this range.

Benefits Overview

We are always looking for good people! Pantheon Data is committed to providing its employees with competitive salaries and benefits in order to increase employee satisfaction and productivity. In addition to our benefits, we also offer SmartBenefits through the Washington Metro Area Transportation Authority, where you specify an amount of your pre-tax wages be paid directly to your SmarTrip account. In some cases, tuition assistance may be available for continuing education expenses and certifications related to their position. Additional details may be found at https://pantheon-data.com/careers/

Pantheon Data Important Information

All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local, or international law.

As part of the application process, you are expected to be on camera during interviews and assessments. We reserve the right to take your picture to verify your identity and prevent fraud.

If you require reasonable accommodation in completing this application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please direct your inquiries to our Talent Team at Recruiting@pantheon-data.com or by phone (571) 363-4020.

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