Senior Forward Deployed Engineer

Second Front Systems•Washington, DC

2d•$160,000 - $200,000•Remote

About The Position

Second Front Systems is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to join our Federal Sales engineering organization. This role requires a senior technical leader with field deployment experience, operating in diverse customer environments from connected networks to classified SCIFs with DDIL constraints. The engineer will own technical relationships for high-visibility defense and intelligence community missions, lead deployments into denied environments, and mentor other forward-deployed engineers. Key responsibilities include setting architectural direction for Game Warden integration, resolving mission-critical issues in zero-connectivity scenarios, and translating field realities into product roadmap priorities. The role demands accountability for technical outcomes in complex, classified environments, real-time critical failure diagnosis without escalation paths, and establishing scalable technical standards. This position is a key partner to engineering, Security/Compliance, and Product leadership, ensuring the platform meets warfighter needs and serving as the senior technical authority for demanding customer relationships.

Requirements

7-10 years of experience in systems deployment, DevSecOps, or platform engineering in regulated/classified government environments, including demonstrated ownership of complex, mission-critical deployments (not just support/execution).
Multi-cloud, government-authorized infrastructure: Hands-on experience deploying and hardening workloads across AWS GovCloud/Commercial, Microsoft Azure Government, and Google Cloud, including Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, or equivalent) tailored to DoD Impact Level 2–6 and JWICS environments.
Container & orchestration security: Expertise securing Kubernetes/OpenShift or equivalent container platforms — image hardening, admission controls, network policies, and runtime security — within accredited enclaves.
Observability & incident response: Skilled in implementing logging, monitoring, and alerting stacks (ELK, Splunk, Prometheus/Grafana) to support 24/7 incident response, penetration test remediation, and Day 2 operations.
Expert level proficiency in Linux (Talos, RedHat) server administration, along with deploying and maintaining Kubernetes on cloud platforms and disparate compute hardware.
Demonstrated leadership: experience mentoring engineers, leading technical design reviews, or acting as a technical lead on customer-facing engagements.
Strong scripting/automation ability in Go, Rust, Python, or Bash, with a track record of building internal tooling to remove manual toil from security and operations workflows.
Active DoD Top Secret/SCI clearance (or eligibility, with active clearance strongly preferred); U.S. citizenship required.

Nice To Haves

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.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end technical delivery for 2F's highest-complexity government and defense engagements — architecting, deploying, and sustaining Game Warden and integrated customer workloads across classified networks, DDIL environments, and multiple Impact Levels (IL2–IL6) and JWICS.
Serve as the senior technical escalation point and primary client-facing authority, representing 2F to senior customer stakeholders (program managers, ISSOs/ISSMs, mission owners) and making real-time architectural and risk-tradeoff decisions on-site.
Lead and mentor other Forward Deployed and DevSecOps Engineers — setting technical standards, reviewing designs, and building the playbooks that let the team scale to new missions faster.
Deploy and harden secure Kubernetes-based infrastructure (Talos Linux, Docker, Istio, GitLab, Helm, Terraform) to sustain a Zero Trust (ZT) environment across customer cloud and on prem environments.
Translate field experience into product and platform improvements, working directly with Engineering and Product leadership to prioritize the roadmap based on real deployment friction.
Drive accreditation and continuous ATO (cATO) outcomes in partnership with the security/compliance team — producing and validating evidence against NIST 800-53, RMF, STIGs, and FedRAMP controls, and owning remediation of findings from 3PAO assessments and penetration tests.
Maintain rigorous configuration management, security documentation, and audit-ready evidence across all engagements, and supporting the 2F team in customer security reviews and audits.
Travel to client locations as needed for complex system deployments, updates and troubleshooting during high impact operational exercises, integration and training events.