Principal Platform Engineer

Clarity Innovations•Herndon, VA

1h•$111,700 - $189,900

About The Position

The Platform Engineer designs, develops, deploys, and maintains foundational infrastructure and platform services that enable mission-critical applications to operate securely, reliably, and at scale. This hands-on engineering 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. Working independently and collaboratively, the engineer solves complex technical challenges, supports project milestones, and helps establish engineering standards for consistent, repeatable, and secure platform operations.

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.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
BS and 8–10 years of relevant experience.
Must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance; only U.S. citizens are eligible for security clearances.
Ability to work independently, take ownership of technical challenges, and deliver results with minimal supervision.
Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across multidisciplinary engineering teams.
Analytical problem-solving skills and the ability to diagnose issues across application, infrastructure, and platform layers.
Strong technical documentation habits and a commitment to maintainable, repeatable engineering practices.
Ability to balance operational demands, security requirements, and long-term platform improvements.

Nice To Haves

Interest or experience in building, integrating, and deploying AI agents or AI-enabled automation capabilities.

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 running in Kubernetes environments.
Implement and maintain GitOps workflows to manage infrastructure and application configurations, support version control, and enable 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 initiatives while ensuring quality and mission requirements are met.