Senior Cloud Operations Engineer

Pantheon Data • Reston, VA

5d • Remote

About The Position

Pantheon Data is seeking a Senior Cloud Operations Engineer to build, operate, and continuously improve AWS GovCloud infrastructure hosting machine-learning-enabled workloads and applications for federal clients. The role owns the cloud foundation and its day-to-day operation, including multi-account architecture, networking, compute, data services, observability, backup and recovery, and cost management. The infrastructure must be reliable, well documented, and ready to support FedRAMP High and DoD IL4/IL5 workloads.

The engineer partners with the DevSecOps Engineer, who owns CI/CD and Kubernetes delivery, and the Cloud Security Engineer, who defines security standards and monitors controls. The role builds and operates the platform those standards apply to. Candidates should be able to describe production environments they personally built and operated, including architecture, monitoring, incidents, and automation.

The position is remote, with a listed work location of Reston, Virginia. Remote or hybrid employees may periodically work from a Pantheon Data office or client site when required. Local candidates should be prepared for an in-person interview; candidates outside the area may be considered for a virtual interview. Applicants must be able to obtain and maintain a Secret clearance; an active Secret clearance is preferred. The stated salary range is $82,000–$190,000, with actual compensation determined by factors including experience, location, and contractual requirements.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field from an accredited university, or equivalent professional experience.
• At least 7 years of hands-on experience in cloud infrastructure, systems engineering, or site reliability engineering, including at least 3 years operating production AWS environments.
• Proficiency with Terraform for production infrastructure, including modular design, state management, and multi-environment promotion.
• Strong AWS networking experience, including 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.
• Proficiency scripting 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 skills, including producing runbooks, architecture documentation, and incident reviews.
• Ability to work effectively remotely in cross-functional teams.
• Ability to meet deadlines and produce quality work.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Suite software, including Outlook, Word, Excel, SharePoint, and PowerPoint.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Secret clearance.

Nice To Haves

• 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.
• Active Secret clearance.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain a multi-account AWS GovCloud organization, including its landing zone, account vending, and baseline configuration, using Terraform and consistent tagging, naming, and environment separation.
• 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.
• Provision and operate core services including EC2, Auto Scaling, Lambda, S3, and RDS/Aurora PostgreSQL; manage Amazon Bedrock quotas and capacity; and provide the network and compute foundation for the DevSecOps team's EKS clusters.
• Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and dashboards against defined service levels; participate in the on-call rotation; lead infrastructure incident response; and write blameless post-incident reviews.
• Maintain hardened, STIG-compliant machine images and automate patching and configuration management with AWS Systems Manager or equivalent tools to meet vulnerability remediation timelines.
• Design, automate, and regularly test backup, restore, and disaster recovery procedures against defined RPO/RTO targets, including cross-region recovery within GovCloud.
• Track and optimize cloud spend and capacity through budgets, rightsizing, commitment planning, and cost allocation reporting.
• Manage infrastructure change processes; maintain runbooks and architecture documentation; automate repetitive operational work; and provide operational evidence for ATO and continuous monitoring.

Benefits

• Competitive salaries and benefits.
• SmartBenefits through the Washington Metro Area Transportation Authority, allowing employees to direct a specified amount of pre-tax wages to a SmarTrip account.
• Tuition assistance may be available in some cases for continuing education expenses and certifications related to the position.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior