Sr. Principal Platform Engineer

Clarity Innovations•Herndon, VA

23h•$133,500 - $227,000

About The Position

Clarity Innovations is seeking a hands-on Platform Engineer to design, develop, deploy, and maintain foundational infrastructure and platform services that enable mission-critical applications to operate securely, reliably, and at scale. The role focuses on platform automation, container orchestration, infrastructure reliability, and continuous delivery in secure environments. The engineer contributes to platform architecture, implementation, and lifecycle management while improving developer workflows, operational efficiency, and system resilience. The role involves working independently and collaboratively to solve complex technical challenges, support project milestones, and establish engineering standards for consistent, repeatable, and secure platform operations. The engineer will collaborate with software engineers, cybersecurity professionals, data engineers, and mission stakeholders to deliver dependable capabilities for national security missions. The position is located in Herndon, Virginia, and requires the ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance; only U.S. citizens are eligible for security clearances.

Requirements

Strong knowledge of Bash, Ansible, and Python, particularly for infrastructure automation, service development, provisioning, and operational tooling.
Hands-on experience with containerization technologies and deploying, managing, and debugging workloads in Kubernetes clusters.
Experience implementing GitOps practices to manage, scale, and audit production infrastructure and containerized workloads.
Proficiency with Linux operating systems, including system administration, troubleshooting, process management, and performance analysis.
Working knowledge of networking, security concepts, system internals, and secure infrastructure design.
Experience with CI/CD pipelines, source control, automated testing, and software release management.
Ability to automate repeatable operational processes and develop reliable, maintainable platform solutions.
Interest or experience in building, integrating, and deploying AI agents or AI-enabled automation capabilities.
Ability to troubleshoot technical problems of moderate scope and complexity and deliver effective, well-documented solutions.
Commitment to engineering excellence, secure-by-design principles, and continuous improvement.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
8–10 years of relevant experience.
Must be able to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance; only U.S. citizens are eligible for security clearances.
Ability to work independently, take ownership of technical challenges, and deliver results with minimal supervision.
Strong collaboration and communication skills, including the ability to work effectively across multidisciplinary engineering teams.
Analytical problem-solving skills and the ability to diagnose issues across application, infrastructure, and platform layers.
Strong technical documentation habits and commitment to maintainable, repeatable engineering practices.
Ability to balance operational demands, security requirements, and long-term platform improvements.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, document, test, and maintain platform services, infrastructure automation, and supporting software.
Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and automated workflows that improve build, test, deployment, and release processes.
Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, operational tasks, and system maintenance using Go, Python, and related tooling.
Deploy, operate, troubleshoot, and optimize containerized applications and services running in Kubernetes environments.
Implement and maintain GitOps workflows for infrastructure and application configurations, version control, and auditable, repeatable deployments.
Apply security best practices across platform infrastructure, networking, operating systems, and software delivery pipelines.
Monitor platform health, troubleshoot complex system issues, and improve reliability, performance, scalability, and operational resilience.
Collaborate with software engineers, cybersecurity professionals, data engineers, and mission stakeholders to deliver dependable platform capabilities.
Explore and integrate emerging technologies, including AI agents and intelligent automation, to improve platform operations and mission effectiveness.
Contribute to technical documentation, engineering standards, and continuous improvement initiatives while ensuring quality and mission requirements are met.