Principal Platform Engineer

Clarity Innovations•Herndon, VA

13h

About The Position

Clarity Innovations is a national security partner delivering software and data engineering solutions to the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense. Its platform modernizes data operations through advanced workflows, CI/CD, and secure DevSecOps practices to support missions in information warfare, cyber operations, operational security, and data structuring. The Platform Engineer designs, develops, deploys, and maintains foundational infrastructure and platform services for secure, reliable, mission-critical applications. This hands-on role focuses on platform automation, container orchestration, infrastructure reliability, and continuous delivery in secure environments. The engineer contributes to platform architecture, implementation, and lifecycle management, while improving developer workflows, operational efficiency, and system resilience. The role requires independent and collaborative problem-solving, support for project milestones, and contributions to consistent, repeatable, secure platform operations. The position is based in Herndon, Virginia. Candidates must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance; only U.S. citizens are eligible for security clearances. The posted national salary range is $111,700–$189,900. The actual offer may vary based on location, contract requirements, experience, skills, education, certifications, and role scope.

Requirements

Strong knowledge of Bash, Ansible, and Python, particularly for infrastructure automation, service development, provisioning, and operational tooling.
Hands-on experience with containerization technologies and deploying, managing, and debugging workloads in Kubernetes clusters.
Experience implementing GitOps practices to manage, scale, and audit production infrastructure and containerized workloads.
Proficiency with Linux operating systems, including system administration, troubleshooting, process management, and performance analysis.
Working knowledge of networking, security concepts, system internals, and secure infrastructure design.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines, source control, automated testing, and software release management.
Ability to automate repeatable operational processes and develop reliable, maintainable platform solutions.
Ability to troubleshoot technical problems of moderate scope and complexity and deliver effective, well-documented solutions.
Commitment to engineering excellence, secure-by-design principles, and continuous improvement.
Ability to work independently, take ownership of technical challenges, and deliver results with minimal supervision.
Strong collaboration, communication, analytical problem-solving, and technical documentation skills.
Ability to diagnose issues across application, infrastructure, and platform layers and balance operational demands, security requirements, and long-term platform improvements.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance; only U.S. citizens are eligible for security clearances.

Nice To Haves

Interest or experience in building, integrating, and deploying AI agents or AI-enabled automation capabilities.
Interest in learning and experimenting with evolving platform technologies and adapting engineering practices to changing mission needs.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, document, test, and maintain platform services, infrastructure automation, and supporting software.
Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and automated workflows to improve build, test, deployment, and release processes.
Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, operational tasks, and system maintenance using Go, Python, and related tooling.
Deploy, operate, troubleshoot, and optimize containerized applications and services in Kubernetes environments.
Implement and maintain GitOps workflows for managing infrastructure and application configurations, version control, and auditable, repeatable deployments.
Apply security best practices across platform infrastructure, networking, operating systems, and software delivery pipelines.
Monitor platform health, troubleshoot complex system issues, and improve reliability, performance, scalability, and operational resilience.
Collaborate with software engineers, cybersecurity professionals, data engineers, and mission stakeholders to deliver dependable platform capabilities.
Explore and integrate emerging technologies, including AI agents and intelligent automation, to improve platform operations and mission effectiveness.
Contribute to technical documentation, engineering standards, and continuous improvement while ensuring quality and mission requirements are met.