Senior Elastic Platform Engineer - Scott Air Force Base, ILZachary Piper Solutions is seeking an experienced Senior Elastic Platform Engineer to support a mission-critical Department of Defense modernization initiative at Scott Air Force Base, IL. This role is ideal for a senior Platform Engineer with strong expertise in Elastic, Kubernetes, and containerized infrastructure who can build, deploy, and maintain enterprise-scale Elastic environments supporting secure operational and observability platforms. The ideal candidate will have experience owning Elastic environments, designing scalable data pipelines, and supporting Kubernetes-based deployments. Experience with ECK (Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes) and Cribl is highly desired, while prior security or SIEM experience is considered a plus.
SECRET CLEARANCE REQUIRED
Key Responsibilities- Design, deploy, and maintain enterprise Elastic Stack environments supporting logging, search, and observability.
- Build and administer Elastic clusters running on Kubernetes in production environments.
- Deploy and manage Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) using Kubernetes operators.
- Develop and maintain custom data ingestion pipelines for operational and application data.
- Integrate Elastic environments with tools such as Cribl and other data collection platforms.
- Configure Index Lifecycle Management (ILM), data retention, and cluster optimization strategies.
- Support containerized infrastructure running in Rancher-managed Kubernetes environments.
- Troubleshoot Elastic, Kubernetes, and distributed platform issues across production systems.
- Collaborate with engineering teams to improve platform automation, reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency.
- Document architecture, deployment standards, and operational procedures.
Qualifications- 7+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or related disciplines.
- Hands-on experience deploying and supporting enterprise Elastic Stack environments.
- Strong Kubernetes experience, including containerized application deployments.
- Experience building Elastic clusters and managing large-scale logging or observability platforms.
- Familiarity with Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) or the ability to demonstrate equivalent Kubernetes and Elastic expertise.
- Experience designing custom ingestion pipelines and integrating enterprise data sources.
- Ability to work onsite five days per week at Scott Air Force Base, IL.
- Active Secret Clearance required (Interim Secret or Interim Top Secret may be considered).
Nice-to-Haves- Experience with Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) deployments.
- Experience with Cribl for log routing and data pipeline management.
- Experience supporting Rancher-managed Kubernetes environments.
- Experience with Elastic Cloud Enterprise (ECE) or Elastic Cloud Hosted (ECH).
- Experience supporting Splunk-to-Elastic migrations.
- Background supporting DoD, federal, or classified environments.
- Experience with SIEM, security logging, or enterprise observability platforms.
Soft Skills- Strong analytical and troubleshooting abilities.
- Ability to independently own and support enterprise platform environments.
- Comfortable working in fast-paced, mission-critical environments.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills across technical teams and government stakeholders.
- Self-motivated with the ability to mentor teammates and contribute to platform best practices.
Compensation & Benefits- Compensation: $190,000-$240,000 annually.
- Long-term, fully funded federal program supporting enterprise platform modernization.
- Opportunity to build and maintain mission-critical Elastic infrastructure supporting the U.S. Air Force.
- Relocation assistance available (approximately $4,000-$5,000+, based on negotiations).
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