Own self-hosted deployments and manage complex infrastructures for sensitive federal and defense clients while developing automation tools for scalability.
Location: New York, NY (Full-time, on-site 5 days/week) Compensation: $190,000 – $220,000 base + competitive equity
Hiring: 1 candidate ASAP
The Role Own self-hosted deployments for sensitive federal and defense customers. This high-ownership infrastructure role begins hands-on — managing deployments across cloud to fully air-gapped on-prem environments, providing compliance guidance, and performing deep debugging — and evolves into building automation, tools, and broader platform-level infrastructure to support efficient scaling for enterprise clients.
Key Responsibilities
Adapt, own, and maintain infrastructure for large customers in federal/defense spaces across heterogeneous environments.
Harden and continuously evaluate security configurations in self-hosted setups.
Guide customers in establishing and implementing compliant architectures, navigating strict security and operational requirements (FedRAMP Moderate equivalent, CMMC, NIST SP 800-53, IL-5/6).
Contribute directly to the product codebase to improve deployability, security, observability, and reliability.
Serve as a forward-deployed engineer, including potential on-site support for classified deployments.
Debug complex technical issues in novel or limited-access environments and enhance observability for future efficiency.
Participate in an on-call rotation to handle software updates, migrations, network changes, and production incidents.
Develop automation, playbooks, and tools to transition from manual operations to scalable multi-customer support.
3+ years of experience in infrastructure software engineering.
Demonstrated ownership of production Kubernetes clusters (through professional work, research, or substantial personal projects).
On-call experience debugging complex production system failures.
Startup background preferred (ideally Series B/C stage); previous forward-deployed engineer or government-sector experience is a strong plus.
Proficiency with IaC tools (Pulumi and/or Terraform).
Broad practical understanding of networking, operating systems, and cybersecurity.
Experience supporting regulated environments such as FedRAMP, CMMC, NIST SP 800-53, IL-5/6, or FedRAMP Moderate.
Comfort navigating unfamiliar codebases.
Strong communication skills for customer-facing interactions and internal collaboration.
Automation-first mindset (builder who codes solutions rather than pure operations).
Must be a US Person per ITAR. TS/SCI clearance is a significant advantage.
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