RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: Relocation assistance may be available
CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: Yes
CLEARANCE TYPE: Top Secret
TRAVEL: Yes, 10% of the Time
DescriptionHelp define how the Air Force delivers mission capability in the cloud.Northrop Grumman Defense Systems (NGDS) is seeking a Dedicated Cloud Engineer to support DAF CLOUDworks, a rapidly growing secure cloud program that encompasses 10+ teams across information security, infrastructure development, and cloud migration.
You will work directly with DAF CLOUDworks mission partners to rapidly enable required application functionality and evolve secure cloud offerings—implementing new requirements, enhancing functionality, increasing efficiency, and reducing operating/deployment costs. Successful candidates will be strong communicators and problem solvers who build and maintain effective working relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
What You’ll Do
- Work side‑by‑side with mission partners to enable and deploy cloud‑hosted applications and services.
- Design, implement, and support solutions in Kubernetes‑centric, cloud environments.
- Automate deployment, configuration, and monitoring using GitOps and CI/CD pipelines.
- Integrate and manage infrastructure components including networking, storage, Linux/Windows hosts, and security controls.
- Contribute to platform engineering efforts to improve reliability, scalability, and security across the DAF CLOUDworks environment.
- Diagnose complex issues across applications, networks, containers, and cloud platforms, and drive them to resolution.
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.
Basic Qualifications
- Principal Engineer (Level 3):
- High school diploma with 9+ years of relevant experience
OR bachelor’s degree with 5+ years of relevant experience
OR master’s degree with 3+ years of relevant experience
- Sr. Principal Engineer (Level 4):
- High school diploma with 12+ years of relevant experience
OR bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of relevant experience
OR master’s degree with 6+ years of relevant experience
- Active Top Secret clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI)
- Ability to obtain IAT Level II certification per DoD 8570.01 (such as CASP+ or Security+) within 60 days of start date
- Technical knowledge of infrastructure components, including:
- Network
- Storage
- Linux/Windows
- IT security concepts
- Working knowledge and/or familiarity with cloud‑based technologies, such as:
- AWS Platform
- Azure Platform
- Google Cloud Platform
- Experience with Kustomize and Helm
- Experience with Linux
- Experience with GitOps and CI/CD, with an emphasis on GitLab
- Experience in application deployment and release management
- Experience with containerization technologies (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift)
- Experience with CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI, ArgoCD)
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, Ansible, or similar tools
- Experience with monitoring and logging tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack)
- Proficiency in at least one scripting language (Python, Bash)
- Strong understanding of application deployment strategies (e.g., blue/green, canary)
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with microservice orchestration, with a strong focus on Kubernetes
- Fundamental cloud certifications such as:
- AWS Cloud Practitioner (or higher)
- Azure Fundamentals (or higher)
- Experience with advanced application and network troubleshooting, database administration, and PKI management
- Experience with cloud providers, with an emphasis on AWS services
- Experience with Agile methodologies
- Experience with various forms of automation, including:
- Batch scripting
- Pipeline automation
- Kubernetes operators
- Infrastructure‑as‑code (e.g., Terraform, Ansible)
- Experience with cloud‑native application architectures
- Experience with service mesh technologies (e.g., Istio, Linkerd)
- Experience with security scanning and vulnerability management tools
- Experience with platform engineering concepts
Primary Level Salary Range: $98,400.00 - $155,400.00
Secondary Level Salary Range: $122,800.00 - $193,900.00
The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions.
Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay. Annual bonuses are designed to reward individual contributions as well as allow employees to share in company results. Employees in Vice President or Director positions may be eligible for Long Term Incentives. In addition, Northrop Grumman provides a variety of benefits including health insurance coverage, life and disability insurance, savings plan, Company paid holidays and paid time off (PTO) for vacation and/or personal business.
The application period for the job is estimated to be 20 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates.
