Senior Customer Operations Engineer

Second Front Systems•Washington, DC

7h•$120,000 - $160,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Second Front Systems (2F) is seeking a Senior Customer Operations Engineer to lead customer implementation engagements on Game Warden, our FedRAMP High-certified, Kubernetes-native DevSecOps platform deployed across classified and unclassified government networks. Our customers are warfighters and national security professionals who depend on rapid time-to-deployment. Failure is not an option—and neither is a slow or broken implementation. As a Senior Customer Operations Engineer on the Implementations team, you will lead the technical execution of customer implementations, guiding organizations through onboarding, deployment, platform migrations, and production readiness within secure, highly regulated environments. You'll work closely with customer application teams, Platform Engineering, Product, Mission Success, and Customer Support to deliver predictable implementation outcomes while continuously improving the quality, repeatability, and efficiency of our implementation practices. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy building strong technical partnerships with customers while turning complex implementation efforts into repeatable deployment patterns. Our mission extends beyond deploying software—we strive to accelerate customer adoption, reduce implementation risk, and establish the operational foundation that enables long-term customer success on Game Warden. Note: This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a DoD Top Secret security clearance. Candidates holding an active or interim DoD TS eligible clearance (or higher) are strongly preferred. Due to the strict federal security requirements for this role, U.S. citizenship is required. Additionally, candidates must reside in one of our approved hiring hubs: DC/Maryland/Virginia Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC Denver/Colorado Springs, CO Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

Requirements

5–7+ years of experience in DevSecOps, Platform Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Cloud Infrastructure, or a related technical discipline, with experience leading customer implementation or deployment engagements.
Deep experience deploying and operating cloud-native applications on Kubernetes, with practical expertise in containerization, Helm, container hardening, and modern application architectures.
Hands-on experience with one or more major cloud providers (AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, or GCP) and experience implementing secure cloud-native solutions within enterprise or government environments.
Experience designing and implementing Infrastructure-as-Code, deployment automation, and repeatable engineering workflows using tools such as Terraform, Pulumi, or similar technologies.
Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills with the ability to identify and resolve issues across infrastructure, networking, Kubernetes, cloud services, and application layers during customer implementations.
Familiarity with secure software delivery practices and experience working within highly regulated or compliance-driven environments (e.g., FedRAMP High, NIST 800-53, DISA Cloud Computing SRG, DoD IL4/IL5/IL6).
Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to lead technical implementation engagements and build trusted partnerships with customer engineering teams and internal stakeholders.
A passion for mentoring engineers, improving implementation processes, and creating documentation, automation, and reusable deployment patterns that accelerate customer success.

Nice To Haves

Experience working in a fast-paced startup or high-growth defense technology environment.
Experience leading customer implementations, platform migrations, or complex production cutovers for enterprise software platforms in government or DoD environments.
Direct experience supporting DoD, IC, or federal civilian customers in a SaaS/PaaS context, ideally at classified or high-baseline authorization levels.
Familiarity with ATO processes, government change management, and the operational constraints unique to classified or ATO-bounded environments.
Familiarity with Zero Trust architecture principles and their application in government cloud environments.
Experience with modern observability platforms and monitoring technologies (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Mimir).
Exposure to hybrid or multi-cloud environments spanning AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Familiarity with technologies in our ecosystem, including Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, Istio, Terraform, relational databases, and Git-based development workflows.
Experience developing customer-facing implementation documentation, deployment guides, or technical enablement materials.

Responsibilities

Lead customer implementation engagements from technical onboarding through successful production deployment on Game Warden.
Implement and maintain secure cloud-native deployment patterns within highly regulated environments, including container hardening and CVE remediation required for DoD accreditation.
Lead application onboarding, platform migrations, runtime configuration, and production cutovers while minimizing deployment risk and customer disruption.
Navigate ATO processes, government change control procedures, and classification-level constraints to deliver compliant implementations within customer-specific operational boundaries.
Partner directly with customer application teams to design and execute secure deployment strategies aligned with platform best practices and government compliance requirements (FedRAMP High, DoD IL4/IL5/IL6).
Partner with Platform Engineering, Product, Customer Support, and Mission Success to ensure successful onboarding, production readiness, and operational handoff.
Identify recurring implementation challenges and improve customer onboarding through documentation, automation, standardized deployment processes, and implementation best practices.
Contribute to technical documentation, reusable implementation guides, runbooks, and knowledge sharing that improve both customer onboarding and internal engineering effectiveness.
Mentor Customer Operations Engineers through implementation planning, deployment execution, and technical coaching while fostering a culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement.

Benefits

Competitive Salary
100% Healthcare, vision and dental coverage
401(k) + 3% company contribution
Additional benefit perks (One Medical membership, mental health resources and family planning assistance)
Equity incentive plan
Tech + office supplies stipend
Annual professional development stipend
Flexible paid time off + federal holidays off
Parental leave
Work virtually, near one of our hub locations
Referral Bonus