Senior Cloud DevOps Engineer

Senior Cloud DevOps Engineer

Torrance, California, United States

At Valar Atomics, we're redefining what's possible in energy. Our mission is to make clean, high-temperature nuclear power scalable—unlocking abundant energy for industry, hydrogen, and next-generation manufacturing. We are a team of builders, engineers, and operators who believe nuclear energy should be fast to deploy, factory-made, and built for the real world. Our first pilot plant in Orangeville, Utah will demonstrate how advanced nuclear systems and fuel fabrication can power the future. Joining Valar Atomics means becoming part of a company where autonomy, ownership, and impact exist at every level.

The Role

Valar Atomics is looking for an experienced Cloud DevOps Engineer to design, build, and maintain scalable, secure, and highly available infrastructure primarily in AWS, with additional support for workloads in Azure. The ideal candidate has hands-on expertise with Kubernetes, CI/CD pipeline design, GitHub Enterprise, and Terraform, and thrives in a fast-paced environment where automation and reliability are top priorities.

You'll work closely with software engineering, security, and platform teams to streamline deployments, improve system observability, and drive infrastructure-as-code best practices across the organization.

This position is fully on-site at our Torrance, CA location. Relocation assistance is not available.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain cloud infrastructure primarily on AWS (EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, RDS, Lambda, EKS, etc.), with secondary support for Azure services
• Build, manage, and optimize Kubernetes clusters (EKS and/or AKS) for containerized workloads, including scaling, networking, and security configurations
• Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines to automate build, test, and deployment processes across multiple environments
• Manage source control workflows, branch policies, and repository administration
• Write, maintain, and review Terraform modules to provision and manage infrastructure as code across cloud providers
• Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting solutions to ensure system reliability and rapid incident response (e.g., CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Azure Monitor)
• Collaborate with development teams to improve deployment velocity, reduce lead time, and support GitOps practices
• Enforce and improve cloud security best practices, including IAM policies, secrets management, and compliance standards
• Troubleshoot production issues across cloud infrastructure, container orchestration, and CI/CD pipelines
• Participate in on-call rotation and incident response as needed
• Document infrastructure architecture, runbooks, and operational procedures
• Continuously evaluate and recommend new tools, technologies, and processes to improve system reliability and developer experience

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in a DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or Cloud Infrastructure Engineering role
• Strong hands-on experience with core AWS services (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, RDS, EKS, Lambda, CloudFormation, etc.)
• Working knowledge (AKS, Azure DevOps, VNets, Azure AD, etc.)
• Solid experience administering and troubleshooting clusters in production environments
• Proven experience building and maintaining pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or similar)
• Hands-on experience including repository management, branch protection, and access controls
• Strong proficiency for infrastructure-as-code, including module design and state management
• Proficiency in scripting languages such as Bash, Python, or Go
• Solid understanding of networking concepts (DNS, load balancing, VPNs, firewalls)
• Experience with containerization technologies (Docker) and container registries
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch, Datadog, or similar)
• Strong understanding of security best practices in cloud environments (IAM, secrets management, least privilege access)

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Relevant certifications (AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Azure Administrator/DevOps Engineer Expert)
• Prior military service in US Airforce or Navy, particularly in communications, networking, cybersecurity, IT, or other technical fields, is highly valued. Relevant military training and operational experience will be considered alongside civilian industry experience.
• Experience with GitOps tools (ArgoCD, Flux)
• Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd)
• Familiarity with policy-as-code tools (OPA, Sentinel)
• Experience working in regulated or compliance-driven environments (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS)
• Background in software development or systems engineering

What We Offer

• Competitive base salary
• Equity ownership in a rapidly growing advanced energy company
• Comprehensive medical benefits
• Free daily lunch and dinner provided onsite
• Generous PPE stipend
• High-impact startup environment with significant ownership and autonomy
• Opportunities for rapid career growth and internal advancement
• Direct collaboration with experienced operators, engineers, and industry leaders
• The opportunity to help build and scale transformative energy technology from the ground up

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Valar Atomics is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable law.

We are committed to providing a workplace free of discrimination and harassment and will provide reasonable accommodation as required by law.

Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States as a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident (green card holder).

Salary: $165,000 - $190,000 USD