TITLE: Platform Engineer
LOCATION: McLean, VA
EMPLOYMENT TYPE: Full-Time Salary
TRAVEL: 20%
POSITION SUMMARYModern Government Solutions (MGS) is seeking a Platform Engineer to design, deploy, maintain, and secure the infrastructure supporting our Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads. You will join a team of platform engineers building and securing enterprise-grade infrastructure and development pipelines, collaborating across the organization to deliver the highest standards in platform reliability and security.
RESPONSIBILITIES (not limited to):- Design, deploy, secure, and maintain highly available, scalable Kubernetes clusters (EKS, AKS, GKE, OpenShift, or self-managed), including control plane and worker node architecture.
- Build and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Tekton, or Argo Workflows) following GitOps practices with tools such as Argo CD.
- Provision infrastructure as code using Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation, and manage Kubernetes deployments with Helm and Kustomize.
- Secure Kubernetes environments through RBAC, admission controllers, vulnerability scanning, and secret management tools such as Vault or AWS Secrets Manager.
- Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and distributed tracing (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, Datadog, or Splunk) and troubleshoot issues across the full stack.
- Write automation scripts and custom tooling in Python, Go, or Bash; mentor junior engineers and lead technical initiatives.
- Travel up to 20% of the time for on-site installations, maintenance, and troubleshooting at customer sites or data centers.
REQUIRED SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS- Must possess an active DoD TS/SCI with CI Poly security clearance.
- 5+ years of professional experience designing, deploying, securing, and maintaining Kubernetes-based infrastructure.
- Current IAM Level II certification to satisfy DOD 8570 IAT requirements.
- Strong knowledge of Kubernetes networking, including CNI plugins (Calico, Cilium), network policies, service meshes (Istio, Linkerd), and DNS.
- Hands-on CI/CD and GitOps experience with industry-standard tools.
- Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi, or CloudFormation) and Kubernetes packaging tools (Helm, Kustomize).
- Strong Linux/Unix administration skills and solid grasp of core networking protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, load balancing).
- Scripting ability in Python, Go, or Bash, and expert-level Git and collaborative development workflows.
- Deep understanding of DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles, with strong problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills.
PREFERRED SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS- Relevant certifications (CKA, CKAD, CKS, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, or Azure DevOps Engineer Expert).
- Experience with Kubernetes operators, custom resource definitions (CRDs), or building internal developer platforms (IDPs).
*Applicants selected will be United States citizens and may be subject to a government security investigation for access to classified information.*
