Serco

Lead DevOps Engineer - Texas Remote

Serco$120K — $145K *
Aerospace & Defense
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Active Department of War (DoW) Secret security clearance required at the time of hire.
  • Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience in technical, engineering, cybersecurity, or program management fields.
  • 8 years of hands-on DevOps infrastructure or platform engineering experience, with a focus on mentorship.
  • Proficient in Terraform for infrastructure-as-code within AWS environments.
  • Strong experience with AWS ECS and Docker, including service architecture and image management.
  • Demonstrated capability in designing and operating CI/CD pipelines.

Responsibilities

  • Serve as a technical mentor for DevOps and platform engineers to enhance their skills.
  • Design and maintain reusable Terraform code for cloud infrastructure management.
  • Architect containerized workloads on AWS ECS, optimizing for performance and reliability.
  • Develop and improve CI/CD pipelines for automating deployments of containerized applications.
  • Collaborate with security teams to meet security compliance for infrastructure deployments.
  • Participate in on-call rotations and incident response, driving postmortem analysis for improvements.

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • 401(k) with employer matching
  • Flexible work arrangements and robust leave benefits
  • Tuition reimbursement program
  • Life insurance and disability coverage
  • Employee Assistance Program
  • Paid parental leave benefits
Full Job Description
Position Description & Qualifications

Serco is excited to support theAir Force Modeling and Simulation Support Services(AFMS3) contract. The primary purpose of this contract is to ensure that the Department of the Air Force (DAF), Department of Defense (DoD), and External Partner Agencies maintain cutting-edge Modeling and Simulation (M&S) capabilities that are secure, interoperable, and efficient. The contractor will provide comprehensive support and innovative solutions that enable the continuous evolution and enhancement of M&S systems, ensuring that the DAF and DoD can effectively prepare for and execute their missions with the highest level of readiness and lethality.

Must have an active Department of War (DoW) Secret security clearance.

We are seeking an experienced LeadDevOps Engineer to drive infrastructure automation, containerized deployments, and CI/CD maturity across our engineering organization, while serving as a technical mentor and force multiplier for the broader team. This role owns the design and evolution of our Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), container orchestration (AWS ECS), and Docker-based build/deploy pipelines, and is expected to actively grow the skills of other engineers through pairing, code review, and structured mentorship - not just ship infrastructure solo. The ideal candidate is as strong a coach and communicator as they are a hands-on engineer.

In this role, you will:

Mentorship & Team Leadership
  • Serve as the technical mentor for DevOps and platform engineers, actively growing their skills in Terraform, containerization, and CI/CD practices through pairing, code review, and structured 1:1 guidance.
  • Establish and lead internal knowledge-sharing practices (brown bags, runbooks, documentation standards, onboarding guides) to raise the team's overall DevOps maturity.
  • Set technical standards and best practices for infrastructure code, container builds, and pipeline design, and hold the team accountable to them through review and coaching rather than top-down mandate.

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
  • Design, build, and maintain modular, reusable Terraform code for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure across environments (dev, staging, production).
  • Establish Terraform state management, workspace, and module versioning strategy to support multiple teams and environments safely.

Container Orchestration (AWS ECS & Docker)
  • Architect and operate containerized workloads on AWS ECS (Fargate and/or EC2 launch types), including service definitions, task scaling, networking, and load balancing.
  • Own Docker image build standards, including multi-stage builds, image hardening/security scanning, and registry management (ECR).
  • Optimize ECS cluster performance, cost, and reliability, including auto-scaling policies, capacity planning, and blue/green or rolling deployment strategies.

CI/CD Pipeline Engineering
  • Design, build, and continuously improve CI/CD pipelines that automate build, test, security scanning, and deployment of containerized applications to ECS.
  • Implement deployment safety mechanisms: automated testing gates, canary/blue-green deployments, rollback automation, and release approvals.

General Engineering & Compliance
  • Collaborate with security and compliance teams to ensure infrastructure and pipelines meet applicable security baselines and, where required, support Assessment & Authorization (A&A)/RMF documentation for infrastructure components.
  • Participate in on-call rotation and incident response for infrastructure and deployment-related issues; drive blameless postmortems and follow-through on action items.


To be successful in this role, you will have:
  • An active DoW Secret clearance required at time of hire.
  • The possibility to telecommute (Full-time)
  • A Bachelor's degree (or additional years of relevant experience in technical, engineering, cybersecurity, or program management fields in lieu of degree)
  • Prior experience supporting AFMS, or other DoD M&S programs is strongly desired
  • 8 years of DevOps/infrastructure/platform engineering experience, including prior experience mentoring or leading other engineers.
  • A deep, hands-on production experience with Terraform for infrastructure-as-code across multi-environment AWS deployments.
  • Hands-on production experience with AWS ECS (Fargate and/or EC2), including service/task design, scaling, and networking.
  • A strong hands-on experience with Docker, including image build optimization, security hardening, and registry management.
  • The proven experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CodePipeline, or similar) for containerized applications.
  • To demonstrate ability to mentor engineers effectively - through code review, pairing, documentation, and coaching - with examples of having grown others' skills.
  • A strong working knowledge of AWS core services (VPC, IAM, ALB/NLB, CloudWatch, ECR, Route 53).
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills, comfortable presenting technical decisions to both engineers and leadership.
  • A CompTIA Security +.
  • The ability to travel 10%.


Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience with policy-as-code tools (Sentinel, OPA/Conftest) and Terraform automation platforms (Terraform Cloud/Enterprise).
  • Experience with container security scanning tools (Trivy, Snyk, Aqua) integrated into CI/CD.
  • Familiarity with observability stacks (Prometheus/Grafana, Datadog, CloudWatch) for infrastructure and pipeline monitoring.
  • Relevant certifications (AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, AWS Solutions Architect, HashiCorp Terraform Associate).
  • Experience formally leading a team or acting as a technical lead across multiple projects/repos.


If you are interested in supporting and working with our team across the globe on a passionate, talented, and diverseSercoteam- then submit your application now for immediate consideration. It only takes a few minutes and could change your career!

To review Serco benefits please visit: https://careers.serco-na.com/us/en/what-we-offer.

Salary range: The range for this position can be found at the top of this posting. This range is provided as a general guideline and represents a good faith estimate across all experience levels. Actual base salary will be determined by a variety of factors, including but not limited to, the scope of the role, relevant experience, job-related knowledge, education and training, key skills, and geographic market considerations. For roles available in multiple states, the range may vary to reflect differences in local labor markets. In addition to base salary, eligible positions may include other forms of compensation such as annual bonuses or long-term incentive opportunities.Benefits - Comprehensible benefits for full-time employees (part-time employees receive a limited package tailored to their role):

  • Medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • Robust vacation and sick leave benefits, and flexible work arrangements where permitted by role or contract
  • 401(k) plan that includes employer matching funds
  • Tuition reimbursement program
  • Life insurance and disability coverage
  • Optional coverages that can be purchased, including pet insurance, home and auto insurance, additional life and accident insurance, critical illness insurance, group legal, ID theft protection
  • Birth, adoption, parental leave benefits
  • Employee Assistance Plan


To review all Serco benefits please visit: https://careers.serco-na.com/us/en/about-us.

Serco complies with all applicable state and local leave laws, including providing time off under the Colorado Healthy Families and Workplaces Act for eligible Colorado residents, in alignment with our policies and benefit plans. The application window for this position is for no more than 60 days. We encourage candidates to apply promptly after the posting date, as the position may close earlier if filled or if the application volume exceeds expectations. Please submit applications exclusively through Serco's external (or internal) career site.

About Serco

Serco Group plc is a British company providing public services. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The company has four divisions: Health, Justice and Immigration, Transport, and Defence, and operates across the UK and Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Serco primarily provides public services to governments, including the operation of prisons and hospitals, defence and aerospace services, and transport services. The company also provides IT and consultancy services to the public sector. Serco has been involved in a number of controversies, including allegations of overcharging the UK government and mismanagement of contracts.
Learn more about Serco
Size
50,000 employees
Industry
Founded
1988

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