Sr. Principal DevOps Engineer (AHT)
About The Position
This position description does not represent a current opening but may be used to identify candidates with skills and experience for positions within Northrop Grumman that frequently become available. Candidates who express an interest may be considered for future positions at Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman’s Space Systems Sector is known for pushing the boundaries of innovation, redefining engineering capabilities, and driving advances in various sciences through cutting-edge technology. Our team is chartered with providing the skills, and innovative technologies to develop, design, produce, and sustain optimized product lines across the sector while providing a decisive advantage to the warfighter. Come be a part of our mission. We are seeking a Sr. Principal DevOps Engineer to lead the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of our CI/CD pipelines and runtime environments. You will own our GitLab-based delivery platform, drive automation across build/test/deploy, and mentor engineers while partnering closely with development, quality assurance, and operations teams. This position will be based in Aurora, CO.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree with 8+ years of relevant experience, OR Master's degree with 6+ years of relevant experience is required. 4 additional years of experience is required in lieu of a degree.
- Must have an active U.S. Government Top Secret security clearance at time of application, current and within scope, with the ability to obtain and maintain SCI approval/access.
- Experience as a DevOps Engineer (or similar), including demonstrated senior‑level responsibilities.
- Hands‑on experience with GitLab and GitLab CI (pipeline YAML, runners, environments, variables).
- Experience with Docker (image builds, runtime configuration, registries, best practices).
- Solid understanding of source control and release management (branching, tagging, versioning, hotfix flows).
- Strong scripting/automation skills (e.g., Bash, Python, or similar).
- Experience working in Linux environments.
- Familiarity with Agile ways of working and collaborating via tools like Jira/Confluence.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate and influence technical direction.
- Demonstrated team player mindset and experience mentoring other engineers.
Nice To Haves
- Bachelors’ STEM degree is highly preferred.
- Experience deploying and managing applications on Docker Swarm or similar orchestration platforms.
- Experience with infrastructure‑as‑code tools such as Ansible.
- Experience integrating Cucumber (or other BDD frameworks) into CI/CD pipelines.
- Experience implementing security and compliance checks in CI/CD (SAST/DAST, dependency scanning, container scanning).
- Knowledge of observability tooling (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK) and release monitoring.
- Background in pipeline optimization (parallelization, caching, artifact management, cost/performance tuning).
- Experience building and deploying applications in Rust and/or C++, including integrating Cargo or CMake workflows into GitLab CI.
Responsibilities
- Own and evolve GitLab CI/CD pipelines for multiple services and environments.
- Architect, implement, and maintain robust CI/CD workflows (build, test, security, deployment, rollback).
- Design and maintain Docker image build processes (Dockerfiles, multi‑stage builds, image scanning, registries).
- Support and optimize containerized runtime environments, including Docker Swarm and/or other orchestration platforms.
- Define and enforce branching strategies, merge request workflows, and release practices in GitLab.
- Integrate quality gates into pipelines (unit tests, integration tests, Cucumber/BDD, static analysis, security scanning).
- Monitor pipeline performance and reliability; identify bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement.
- Implement configuration‑as‑code for pipeline definitions and deployment workflows (GitOps mindset).
- Collaborate with development and QA to ensure safe, repeatable, and observable releases.
- Mentor and coach engineers on DevOps practices, tooling, and automation patterns.
Benefits
- Relocation assistance may be available
- health insurance coverage
- life and disability insurance
- savings plan
- Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business
- overtime
- shift differential
- a discretionary bonus
- Annual bonuses
- Long Term Incentives (for VP or Director positions)
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
