Site Reliability Engineer

Bridge Defense•Washington, DC

11d•$135,000 - $150,000•Onsite

About The Position

Bridge Defense seeks a highly qualified Site Reliability Engineer to build and lead the company's deployment engineering function responsible for operating software within accredited, air-gapped, and high-side production environments. This hands-on role will establish the technical direction, operational standards, and deployment practices for mission-critical software delivered into government environments. The successful candidate will own the end-to-end deployment lifecycle across cloud, on-premises, and disconnected networks while partnering closely with software engineers, infrastructure providers, and customers to ensure secure, reliable, and scalable operations.

Requirements

U.S. Citizenship.
Active U.S. security clearance or the ability to obtain and maintain one.
Willingness to work onsite within secure government facilities.
Willingness to travel to customer and partner locations.
Strong Linux system administration experience (RHEL or equivalent).
Hands-on experience administering Kubernetes or OpenShift environments.
Experience with Docker, Podman, or other container technologies.
Experience operating cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP) and/or on-premises environments.
Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI, Jenkins, Helm, or equivalent technologies.
Experience implementing Infrastructure as Code using Terraform or similar tools.
Experience with monitoring and alerting platforms such as Prometheus, Alertmanager, Grafana, Splunk, or PagerDuty.
Working knowledge of cybersecurity and compliance frameworks including FedRAMP, DoD SRG, IL5, FISMA, and NIST 800-171.
Proficiency in at least one programming or scripting language including Go, Java, Python, Bash, Groovy, Ruby, or similar.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, or a related technical discipline preferred. Equivalent professional experience may be considered.
Minimum of four (4) years of Linux systems administration experience.
Experience supporting production systems in accredited or regulated environments.
Experience deploying and maintaining containerized applications at scale.
Experience supporting mission-critical production infrastructure.
Strong risk management skills, excellent communication, teamwork, and conflict management skills.
Analytical and effectively able to prioritize needs, requirements, and other issues.
Ability to communicate and interact effectively at all levels of staff and management.
Ability to exercise independent judgment, develop relationships, and obtain consensus among interested parties.
Critical thinker with strong technical skills, diagnostic skills, and problem-solving ability.
Solid written and verbal communication skills to negotiate direction, drive projects to successful conclusion, and deliver knowledge to team members through documentation, runbooks, and technical sessions.
Self-starter, flexible, adaptable, collaborative, and motivated to champion continuous improvement.
Ability to develop peer networks across an enterprise to maintain technology awareness and support problem resolution.
Ability to operate across traditional technical boundaries, including compute, networking, storage, and platform infrastructure.
Technically curious and driven to continuously learn new skills.
Comfortable working independently in secure environments with minimal supervision.
Demonstrates a strong bias toward automation, operational excellence, and continuous improvement.

Nice To Haves

Experience operating within air-gapped, disconnected, or classified environments.
Experience deploying and supporting third-party mission applications such as TAK, TRAX, or similar operational software.
Experience maintaining systems operating under an Authorization to Operate (ATO).
Experience working on managed deployment or orchestration platforms.
Strong troubleshooting skills with complex distributed systems.
Demonstrated ability to automate repetitive operational tasks.
Experience supporting startup or rapidly growing engineering organizations.
Advanced technical degree preferred.
Experience leading deployment or platform engineering initiatives.
Experience establishing operational standards, processes, and technical documentation.
Experience supporting government or Department of Defense cloud environments.
DoD 8570 IAT Level II certification or higher (Security+, CISSP, or equivalent).
Linux+, RHCE, or other Unix/Linux administration certifications.

Responsibilities

Lead and grow the deployment engineering function as its first and founding engineer, setting standards for how Bridge Defense ships and operates software in accredited and high-side environments.
Own the full deployment lifecycle on top of our partners' managed orchestration platforms (packaging, configuration, release, upgrade, and rollback) for both CodeBridge-developed software and third-party mission applications (TAK, TRAX, and others).
Manage Kubernetes clusters, workload configuration, resource allocation, and namespace/tenancy across cloud, on-prem, and multiple network enclaves with differing accreditation and connectivity constraints.
Operate and maintain availability of cloud and physical Linux infrastructure powering the platform in air-gapped and high-side production environments.
Partner closely with CodeBridge engineers to make their software deploy and run reliably within the constraints of accredited, disconnected environments — advocating for sensible, scalable systems design and shared ownership of production.
Build and support CI/CD and configuration-management workflows, and automate routine deployment and operational tasks wherever possible.
Integrate security tooling into the deployment pipeline; run scans, triage findings, and remediate vulnerabilities.
Diagnose, resolve, and prevent production issues; participate in and help define the on-call model for the team.
Produce and maintain body-of-evidence artifacts (System Security Plans, architecture diagrams) and keep architectures within the scope of a granted ATO.