Red Hat OpenShift Engineer SME

ECS Tech Inc•Fairfax, VA

2d•$175,000 - $210,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Everforth ECS is seeking a Red Hat OpenShift Engineer Subject Matter Expert (SME) to support a large DoD program operating across AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, classified cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments. The SME will be a technical authority for the architecture, deployment, administration, optimization, security, sustainment, and troubleshooting of Red Hat OpenShift environments across multiple classification levels. The role requires hands-on ownership of production OpenShift clusters, resolving complex platform failures, establishing technical standards, mentoring engineers, and advising leadership on architecture, risk, and technical tradeoffs. The position is hybrid remote/onsite, supporting customer locations in Fairfax, Virginia, and/or Springfield, Virginia. Regular SCIF and onsite support is expected approximately 3–4 days per week, with additional onsite support as needed for critical deployments, maintenance, or operational issues. The successful candidate will coordinate with cloud, infrastructure, cybersecurity, program and project management, customer, and partner teams. The role may also support OpenShift platforms hosting AI/ML, data-intensive, and other mission requirements, and contribute to solutioning, capture, and proposal activities as needed. The stated salary range is $175,000–$210,000. The posting refers to a general description of benefits at the company careers benefits page but does not list specific benefits.

Requirements

Bachelor of Science degree or equivalent directly relevant experience, subject to contractual labor category requirements.
Active TS security clearance and eligibility and willingness to obtain SCI access and a CI polygraph.
7+ years of responsible and relevant infrastructure/platform engineering experience, including substantial hands-on Kubernetes experience and at least 3+ years of hands-on production Red Hat OpenShift engineering/administration experience.
Expertise designing, deploying, administering, upgrading, and troubleshooting Red Hat OpenShift clusters in production environments.
Demonstrated experience operating OpenShift across enterprise cloud, on-premises, and/or hybrid infrastructure environments.
Expertise with Kubernetes architecture, deployment, administration, workload management, and troubleshooting.
Strong Linux systems administration experience with RHEL and Red Hat Enterprise Linux CoreOS (RHCOS).
Hands-on experience with OpenShift/Kubernetes environments using Infrastructure as Code, configuration management, Helm, and/or GitOps methodologies.
Experience implementing security hardening, vulnerability remediation, patching, and configuration compliance in regulated or DoD environments.
Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure and experience deploying or operating OpenShift/Kubernetes within AWS, Azure, or comparable enterprise cloud environments.
Demonstrated ability to independently troubleshoot complex production platform issues, perform root cause analysis, and develop actionable technical recommendations.
Demonstrated ability to serve as a technical escalation point person, mentor engineers, establish platform standards, and communicate technical risks and tradeoffs to customers and leadership.
Strong customer focus and strong written, verbal, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
DoD 8570-01M certification: IAM Level I or better (e.g., Security+).

Responsibilities

Architect, plan, deploy, administer, upgrade, optimize, and sustain Red Hat OpenShift environments across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid infrastructure and applicable DoD impact/classification levels.
Own OpenShift cluster lifecycle activities, including installation, configuration, upgrades, patching, backup and restore, certificate management, operators, security, networking, storage, performance, and capacity management.
Serve as the senior escalation point for production OpenShift failures and perform root cause analysis across control plane and worker nodes, operators, networking, storage, ingress, DNS, authentication/RBAC, certificates, registries, workloads, resource constraints, and cluster health and performance.
Support onboarding of customer and partner/vendor teams and coordinate with program/project management and engineering teams to ensure appropriate resources, dependencies, and operational support.
Implement and troubleshoot OpenShift/Kubernetes networking, including Services, Routes/Ingress, DNS, network policies, load balancing, and integration with enterprise networking and firewalls.
Integrate and troubleshoot persistent storage using Storage Classes, Persistent Volumes/Claims, and enterprise or cloud storage platforms.
Automate OpenShift/Kubernetes infrastructure and application configuration using Infrastructure as Code, configuration management, Helm, and GitOps methodologies.
Integrate OpenShift with enterprise CI/CD pipelines, container registries, artifact repositories, security scanning, and GitOps workflows.
Maintain security compliance and execute remediation, patching, vulnerability management, and POA&M activities required to sustain applicable ATOs.
Develop architecture, configuration, operating, troubleshooting, and knowledge-transfer documentation; cross-train engineers; and establish repeatable platform standards and procedures.
Advise Government customers, project management, engineering teams, and leadership on OpenShift architecture, migrations, platform operations, technical risks, tradeoffs, and recommended solutions.
Support OpenShift platforms hosting AI/ML, data-intensive, and other mission requirements/lines of effort as required.
Track relevant platform and industry developments and contribute to solutioning, capture, and proposal activities as needed.