Senior Infrastructure Engineer

About BlackSky: BlackSky is a pioneering, real-time geospatial intelligence company operating the world most advanced space-based satellite monitoring platform. We provide critical global imagery, automated satellite analytics, and high-frequency target tracking to the most demanding allied military, national security, intelligence, and commercial enterprises across the globe. By empowering organizations to see, understand, and anticipate environmental or economic change as it happens, our technical systems deliver an unassailable strategic advantage. Our distributed tech teams build cutting-edge systems to enable rapid geospatial foresight under a people-first, mission-driven operational culture.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly autonomous, systems-fluent, and security-minded Senior Infrastructure Engineer to join our global Platform Engineering team under a permanent, full-time remote layout open across eligible states in the United States, with physical office footprints in Herndon, VA and Seattle, WA. In this hands-on engineering seat, you will take absolute architectural ownership over the cloud, hybrid, and air-gapped platforms running our complex customer telemetry workloads. Shifting completely away from routine client-facing front-end CSS rendering, basic back-office data transcription, or non-technical file entry, you will drive an active infrastructure-as-code, GitOps cluster release, and localized software containerization laboratory—partnering closely with downstream software developers. This position requires an enterprise delivery authority with 5+ years of infrastructure experience who handles server provisioning fluidly natively using DevOps and infrastructure-as-code mechanisms, administers high-availability container clusters across Amazon EKS, Rancher (RKE2), and OpenShift environments, bundles secure manifests for air-gapped installs using packaging tools like Zarf, and engineers robust CI/CD artifact lifecycles confidently to protect global mission-critical architectures.

Key Responsibilities

• Multi-Environment AWS Infrastructure Governance: Architect, implement, and maintain scalable cloud environments across AWS (including VPC topology, subnet arrays, NLB/ALB routing, IAM policies, and S3 buckets) natively utilizing DevOps and infrastructure frameworks.
• Enterprise Kubernetes Cluster Operations: Deploy, upgrade, and manage production-grade Kubernetes platforms spanning EKS, Rancher (RKE2), or Red Hat OpenShift 4, taking charge of capacity planning and networking.
• GitOps Workflow Instrumentation: Enforce declarative state automation engines with Argo CD—orchestrating app-of-apps blueprints, automated sync policies, drift detection, and progressive application rollout strategies.
• Workload Package Engineering: Author, version, and scale custom Helm charts, establishing clean values file hierarchies and structural templating standards across distributed testing targets.
• Air-Gapped & Isolated Delivery: Build repeatable deployment bundles for disconnected, secure, or government networks leveraging Zarf or equivalent mirroring and registry isolation software tools.
• Secure Supply Chain Hardening: Build and harden automated CI/CD pipelines to promote code artifacts securely from development entirely into restricted production, utilizing zero-known-vulnerability minimal base images (Chainguard, Iron Bank).

Required Skills & Qualifications

• A minimum of 5+ years of proven professional history operating inside an Infrastructure, Platform Engineering, DevOps, or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) capacity.
• Mandatory Kubernetes Production History: At least 3+ years of active, hands-on production experience deploying and administering enterprise container orchestration nodes.
• Master-level competence codifying infrastructure programmatically via Terraform alongside continuous delivery engineering via Argo CD (or Flux) .
• Profound, granular command over Linux systems administration, shell operations, and continuous scripting using Bash paired with Python or Go .
• Hands-on production instrumentation history tracking container performance using Prometheus and Grafana (including PromQL metrics and custom dashboard building).
• Location Context: Position operates under flexible remote guidelines open to qualified infrastructure engineering authorities residing permanently within the United States .

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Technical breadth across all three major distributions: Amazon EKS, Rancher/RKE2, and OpenShift 4, with capability to migrate configurations between them.
• Experience packaging and mirroring binary registries for Edge or resource-constrained clusters (such as lightweight k3s profiles).
• Direct familiarity implementing secure secrets management (HashiCorp Vault, External Secrets Operator) and PKI/certificate automation tooling (cert-manager).
• Familiarity deploying distributed storage layers (Ceph, EBS/EFS tracking) or instrumenting system traces using OpenTelemetry (OTEL) collectors .
• Prior background supporting highly regulated, government compliance, or service-mesh enabled (Istio) network infrastructures holding active industry certifications (CKA, CKAD, CKS).

What We Offer

• Highly Competitive US Tech Salary Grid: An attractive, experience-calibrated annual base salary structure of $135,000 - $150,000 USD (benchmarked directly to Seattle, WA baselines; localized state calibrations apply), supplemented by corporate equity access.
• 100% remote workspace freedom across eligible US states, with hardware customization pathways (Mac or PC choices).
• 100% Paid Individual Health Premiums: BlackSky pays 100% of employee-only insurance premiums for Medical, Dental, and Vision protection packages.
• A monthly $100 cash stipend allowance to assist cleanly with out-of-pocket remote office or healthcare expenses.
• Retirement savings security via an attractive 401(k) program containing pre-tax and Roth options with a corporate employer matching contribution layer.
• Comprehensive Leave Incentives: 15 days of PTO, 11 observed company national holidays, 4 floating holidays, paid parental leave, and a dedicated day of paid volunteerism leave annually.
• Access to Employee Stock Purchase Programs (ESPP), employer matching donations, and continuous professional development tracks.