Senior DevOps Engineer

Raft Company Website•Hanscom AFB, MA

8h•Hybrid

About The Position

Raft is building mission-critical data platforms for the Department of War that process billions of events per day from hundreds of sensors and operational sources, delivering intelligence to operators who use it to make time-sensitive decisions. Our platform runs across multiple classification levels and deployment environments. As a Senior DevOps Engineer at Raft, you won’t be operating in a pure infrastructure lane. You will be expected to understand the software you’re deploying, contribute to it when needed, and engage with the data pipelines flowing through the systems you manage. This is a role for someone who thinks end-to-end, from data ingest and pipeline performance through to Kubernetes-based deployment, observability, and secure operations in defense environments. You will work across cloud and on-premises environments, partner closely with software and data engineers, and help Raft maintain the operational rigor and platform reliability that our most demanding customers depend on.

Requirements

5+ years of relevant hands-on experience in DevOps or platform engineering roles.
5+ years of production experience with Docker and Kubernetes, including provisioning, operating, and troubleshooting clusters in real-world environments
Strong experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, with hands-on proficiency in GitLab CI, GitOps workflows (Flux, ArgoCD), and modern software delivery practices
Experience supporting data-intensive platforms using streaming technologies such as Kafka, or Flink, including configuration, tuning, and operational support
Solid understanding of data engineering fundamentals, including ETL/ELT pipeline design, data storage patterns, data governance concepts, and integration with downstream consumers
Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code tooling, particularly Terraform; experience with Ansible or similar configuration management tools
Strong Helm proficiency, including authoring and maintaining charts for complex multi-service deployments
Hands-on experience with platform observability tooling: Prometheus, Grafana, Fluentbit, Loki or Elasticsearch/Kibana
Demonstrable software development skills in Java and/or Go, comfortable reading, modifying, and contributing to application codebases, not just deploying them
Experience with cloud infrastructure on AWS and/or Azure, including networking, IAM, storage, and managed Kubernetes services
Strong systems thinking, troubleshooting discipline, and the ability to work independently in a fast-moving environment with competing priorities
Experience applying secure and compliant deployment practices in regulated or government environments
Active Secret clearance required; must be eligible for and willing to obtain a Top Secret/SCI clearance
Ability to obtain Security+ certification within the first 90 days of employment
Ability to travel up to 25%

Nice To Haves

Experience with service mesh technologies, particularly Istio, including traffic management, mTLS, and observability integration
Familiarity with Kubernetes-based ML/AI platforms such as Kubeflow, KServe, or Ray, and experience supporting GPU-enabled workloads
Experience with software supply chain security tools including container image scanning, SBOM generation, and runtime vulnerability management
Background supporting deployments across multiple classification levels or air-gapped / disconnected environments
Experience with package and dependency management across polyglot environments (Maven, Gradle, NPM, Yarn, pip)
Familiarity with compliance frameworks relevant to DoW software deployment, including RMF, STIGs, and IL4/IL5/IL6 requirements
Contributions to or ownership of internal developer platforms, golden path tooling, or shared infrastructure services
Experience with distributed tracing and APM tooling (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Tempo)
Existing TS/SCI clearance strongly preferred

Responsibilities

Design, implement, and maintain secure Kubernetes-based infrastructure supporting data platform workloads across cloud and on-premises environments
Build, manage, and improve CI/CD pipelines using GitLab and GitOps-based delivery patterns, enabling reliable, repeatable deployments across multiple classification levels
Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools such as Terraform and Ansible to provision, configure, and lifecycle-manage platform infrastructure
Collaborate directly with software engineers to understand service architectures, dependencies, and runtime behavior, and contribute code-level changes where needed to improve deployability, reliability, or observability
Support and optimize data streaming and processing pipelines built on technologies such as Kafka, Kafka Streams, Flink, and Pinot, diagnosing bottlenecks, tuning configurations, and ensuring data integrity across the platform
Implement and manage platform observability using monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana), logging (Fluentbit, Loki, Kibana), and alerting tooling to maintain operational awareness in production environments
Apply and enforce DevSecOps practices including container hardening, vulnerability scanning, software supply chain security, and compliance-driven deployment patterns in regulated government environments
Manage and debug complex Helm chart deployments, service mesh configurations (Istio), and Kubernetes networking across multi-cluster and multi-environment topologies
Support operations across multiple deployment targets, cloud-hosted (AWS, Azure), on-premises data centers, and edge/tactical environments, adapting platform patterns to the constraints of each
Write clean, maintainable automation and tooling in Java or Go to accelerate platform operations, reduce toil, and improve developer experience across engineering teams
Engage directly with customers at the most operationally demanding locations in the Department of War