Principal Cloud Engineer

Principal Cloud Engineer

MUST BE ABLE TO OBTAIN/MAINTAIN A TOP SECRET CLEARANCE

Location: Colorado Springs, CO (Onsite)

Role Overview

We are seeking a Cloud Engineer to support a project that bridges intelligence community collection architectures with operational and tactical requirements. This effort delivers innovative and cost-effective capabilities to meet user needs across various domains. The cloud engineer will be part of a team that maintains, enhances, and upgrades applications and services in an enterprise environment by participating in the implementation and maintenance of On-Prem Cloud and IT Infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide mid- to top-tier Kubernetes cloud engineering in on-prem heterogeneous environments.
• Develop and maintain automation for deployments and configuration management.
• Administer and manage multiple on-prem cloud environments.
• Monitor and remediate cloud infrastructure health, performance, and availability.
• Provide cloud operations support during exercises.
• Update cloud environments and apply security guidelines.
• Manage cloud infrastructure and services, including Linux VMs, RKE2, Rancher, and storage.
• Remediate vulnerabilities and respond to tasking orders.
• Maintain standard operating procedures and troubleshooting guides.
• Assist teammates with infrastructure and server administration.
• Manage software installations and asset or application inventories.
• Draft and enhance documentation for problem resolution processes.
• Prepare technical justifications for hardware and software procurement.
• Execute other systems administration tasks as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• An understanding of network protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS).
• An applicable System Administrator Intermediate Certification (such as Security+ CE or higher).
• A bachelor's degree plus four or more years of experience. Four additional years of experience may be substituted for a degree.
• Knowledge of security compliance (e.g., STIGs, SCAP).
• Proficiency in operating systems such as RHEL and Rocky Linux.
• Expertise in deploying Rancher Kubernetes Engine 2 (RKE2) on-prem.
• Experience installing, configuring, and troubleshooting RKE2, including software like cert-manager, Keycloak, Grafana, Loki, Alloy, Longhorn, Rancher, and Argo CD.
• Skill in using GitOps for automated deployments with Argo CD.
• Organizational skills with experience in documentation, log analysis, system audits, and record keeping.
• Adaptability to evolving system and support requirements.
• Technical writing skills for documenting plans, findings, and recommendations.
• Must be a U.S. citizen.
• Must be based in Colorado Springs and able to work on-site 100%.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and/or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certification.
• Documented knowledge of configuration management tools (Ansible).
• Documented experience with scripting (e.g., shell, bash, python).
• Experience supporting enterprise authentication (e.g., LDAP, OIDC).
• Working knowledge of infrastructure hardware and appliances.