Forward Deployed Engineer

Raft•Huntsville, AL

6d•Onsite

About The Position

Raft is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to serve as the organization’s technical face to customers in Huntsville, Alabama. The role combines engineering expertise and customer-facing communication to support mission-critical production systems in a forward-deployed environment. The engineer will troubleshoot system-level issues, support containerized applications and CI/CD pipelines, and help ensure operational excellence and reliability. The position is onsite and may require up to 25% travel to CONUS and OCONUS locations. Applicants must be U.S. citizens, and all work must be performed within the continental United States. An active Secret clearance and the ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret clearance are required. A valid, active U.S. passport with at least six months of validity beyond the intended employment period is required to facilitate international travel and meet government-contract security requirements.

Requirements

Strong engineering background with proven experience deploying and supporting production systems.
Solid understanding of software engineering principles and practices.
Hands-on experience debugging and troubleshooting Kubernetes.
Expertise in CI/CD tools and methodologies.
Demonstrated ability to perform system-level debugging across multiple platforms.
Broad technical knowledge spanning various technologies and architectures.
Excellent communication skills and ability to work effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Outgoing personality and strong customer-facing capabilities.
U.S. citizenship; all work must be conducted within the continental United States.
Active Secret clearance and ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret clearance.
Valid, active U.S. passport with at least six months of validity beyond the intended period of employment.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience in SCIF environments or with cleared customers.
Previous INDOPACOM experience or familiarity with the region.
Kubernetes certifications, such as CKA or CKAD.
Experience with OpenShift or other Kubernetes distributions.
Background supporting DoD or federal government customers.
Familiarity with containerization technologies and cloud-native architectures.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary technical liaison between engineering teams and forward-deployed customers.
Troubleshoot and debug production systems at the system level to help ensure uptime and performance.
Deploy, maintain, and support containerized applications in Kubernetes environments.
Provide technical support for CI/CD pipelines and container orchestration platforms.
Diagnose and resolve complex technical issues across diverse technology stacks.
Collaborate with backend engineering teams to implement solutions and improvements.
Support operational deployments and maintain system reliability in production environments.
Interface directly with customer stakeholders in secure environments.