Senior Cloud Engineer

Senior Cloud Engineer

Everforth ECS is seeking a Senior Cloud Engineer to work in the National Capital Region covering the Pentagon, Falls Church, and Fairfax. This position is contingent upon contract award.

The War Data Platform (WDP) is a key initiative within the U.S. Department of War's (DoW) AI-First strategy introduced in early 2026. The WDP focuses on operational warfighting data and aims to accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) on the battlefield. The WDP extends to Unclassified, Secret, and Top Secret environments, and supports collaboration between Combatant Commands, Joint Staff directorates, Senior Executive Service leaders, and operational analysts.

The Senior Cloud Engineer is an experienced cloud infrastructure professional responsible for designing, deploying, and sustaining the secure multi-enclave cloud environments that support WDP Core Integration mission systems across IL2/NIPRNet, IL5/AWS GovCloud, IL6/AWS Secret Region, and JWICS. Working in close coordination with the Cloud Engineer SME, platform operations teams, cybersecurity personnel, and DevSecOps engineers, this role ensures that WDP cloud infrastructure is provisioned, hardened, monitored, and maintained to the operational and compliance standards required for mission-critical DoW programs.

Responsibilities include:

• Developing, deploying, and maintaining secure cloud infrastructures supporting Department of War operational, analytical, and mission-support systems.
• Configuring Amazon Web Services environments using Virtual Private Clouds, subnets, routing policies, identity and access configurations, and encryption mechanisms aligned with System Operations Plan requirements.
• Implementing CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and AWS Config to track operational health, configuration drift, performance thresholds, and compliance metrics.
• Supporting release and deployment activities using automated orchestration pipelines, version control repositories, rollback procedures, and production validation steps documented in Software Release Plans.
• Implementing configuration hardening standards across compute, storage, and networking layers using government-approved controls, automated remediation tools, and continuous compliance checks.
• Performing system administration functions including firewall rule adjustments, capacity optimization, load balancing actions, and cross-enclave connectivity troubleshooting.
• Supporting incident response teams by collecting system evidence, identifying anomalous activity, and contributing to root cause analysis supporting military investigative processes.
• Maintaining operational documentation covering system configurations, architecture baselines, capacity reports, and performance dashboards.
• Automating deployments using Infrastructure-as-Code mechanisms such as CloudFormation, AWS Systems Manager, and scripted orchestration workflows.
• Coordinating with program leadership, engineers, and mission stakeholders to validate requirements, integrate technical enhancements, and sustain operational readiness.
• Producing system metrics demonstrating service availability, performance improvement, and security compliance.
• Delivering resilient cloud operations supporting Department of War mission execution, data integrity, and enterprise reliability.
• Performing other duties as assigned.

Requirements include:

• Current Secret security clearance with the ability to obtain and maintain a Top Secret (TS) security clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI).
• 10–12 years of progressively responsible experience in cloud engineering, cloud infrastructure administration, or a closely related field, with demonstrated proficiency designing, deploying, and sustaining secure cloud environments in support of DoW or federal government programs.
• Hands-on proficiency with core AWS services including VPC architecture, IAM policy configuration, KMS encryption, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and AWS Config, with demonstrated experience managing these capabilities across IL5/AWS GovCloud, IL6/AWS Secret Region, or JWICS environments in compliance with DoW cybersecurity and authorization requirements.
• Demonstrated experience implementing Infrastructure-as-Code and Configuration-as-Code automation using tools such as CloudFormation, AWS Systems Manager, Terraform, or Ansible, including automated configuration hardening, compliance validation, and patch lifecycle management across multi-enclave production environments.
• Experience supporting DevSecOps CI/CD pipeline operations, software release management, rollback procedures, and incident response activities in classified or government cloud environments, including system evidence collection and root cause analysis in support of investigative and authorization processes.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making capabilities, with a proven ability to weigh the relative costs and benefits of potential actions and identify the most appropriate solution.
• Highly developed interpersonal and oral/written communication skills, with the ability to effectively and professionally interact with a diverse set of stakeholders (from peers to end-users to executive management).