Sr. DevOps Engineer

Job Summary

As a Senior DevOps Engineer at Ursa Space Systems, you will architect and operate the robust, secure, and highly scalable infrastructure that powers our satellite intelligence platform. This is a high-impact role where you will bridge software development and cloud operations to build resilient, auto-scaling environments capable of AI-assisted querying on massive geospatial datasets with high levels of concurrent system activity.

A key focus of this role is strengthening the scalability and security of our backend platform and evolving our infrastructure to support increasing concurrency, reliability, and operational efficiency at scale. You will play a critical role in designing systems that are secure by default, observable in real time, and resilient under production load.

You will also serve as a technical leader in defining the “paved roads” for CI/CD and infrastructure best practices, enabling engineering teams to deploy quickly without compromising reliability or security. Your work will span cloud infrastructure, automation, observability, DevSecOps, and platform scalability, with a strong emphasis on AWS-based architectures and services.

Our core technology stack includes AWS, Terraform, Python, and Java. Deep expertise with AWS cloud infrastructure and services is essential for success in this role.

This position is fully remote, or optionally in-person at our headquarters in Ithaca, NY. This position may have on-call responsibilities.

What Success Looks Like

• Security and reliability is integrated into the CI/CD pipeline (DevSecOps) so that breaks and vulnerabilities are caught before code is even deployed.
• Ensuring users and services have exactly the permissions they need and nothing more (e.g., RBAC, advanced IAM policies).
• All systems have real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities for failures and suspicious activity.
• Designing infrastructure that can withstand an attack or misconfiguration without a total system failure.
• Make our infrastructure and systems easy to configure, maintain and observe. We can debug and resolve production issues quickly with the help of monitors, logging and metrics.  

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain secure, scalable, and highly available AWS infrastructure supporting Ursa Space production systems.
• Develop and manage infrastructure-as-code solutions using Terraform and AWS-native tooling.
• Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps practices to enable fast, reliable, and secure deployments.
• Improve backend scalability, reliability, and system performance to support high levels of concurrency and production traffic.
• Implement monitoring, logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting systems to improve observability and incident response.
• Develop and maintain self-service infrastructure tooling and platform automation to improve engineering productivity.
• Support containerized applications and microservice-based architectures in cloud-native environments.
• Implement security best practices across infrastructure, including IAM, RBAC, secrets management, and compliance controls.
• Partner closely with software engineering teams on architecture, deployment, operational excellence, and production reliability initiatives.
• Participate in architecture reviews, incident response, on-call rotations, and continuous improvement efforts across the platform.

Requirements

• B.S. in Computer Science, or other engineering discipline in which software development is a focus
• Industry experience in a Devops, SRE or software engineer role
• Strong experience with AWS Cloud stack like S3, ECS, CloudFront, EFS, API Gateway etc.
• Experience using AI-assisted tools for rapid development and testing
• Expert knowledge of common software development tooling (Git, Docker, IDEs, linters, formatters, testing frameworks, terraform and python modularization)
• Experience with AWS GovCloud as well as associated governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) tooling
• Proficient in Terraform, AWS CDK, and Python
• Experience with NoSQL and/or SQL databases (Mongo, MySQL, Postgres)
• Experience with managing code and container repositories as well as CI/CD functions at scale (GitLab, Amazon ECR preferred)
• Familiarity with release processes for SaaS products
• Experience with microservice-based architectures and related design principles
• Organized and self motivated, able to successfully work with a remote team
• A creative, intuitive, and flexible mindset to approach complex problems and build innovative solutions.
• A fast, reliable internet connection if you are working remotely is a must.

Preferred Skills

• Experience in GIS tools and libraries like SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC)
• Current AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification

Compensation

• $140,000 - $180,000, relative to skills and experience

Location

• We are headquartered in Ithaca, NY and have a remote workforce in other locations throughout the United States.

Please note: applications without a relevant cover letter will not be considered. In your cover letter, we would like to hear your personal voice and learn about your sincere interest in Ursa Space Systems.

Benefits and Perks

• Competitive Compensation
• Discretionary PTO & Flexible Scheduling
• Stock Options
• 401(k) Match
• Medical, Dental and Vision Coverage for you and your dependents
• FSA & HSA Plans
• Employer-paid Life Insurance
• Employer-paid LTD and STD for Parental and Family Care
• 11 Paid Holidays
• Employee Resource Groups
• Educational Assistance Program
• Professional Development Opportunities
• And more…

Company Values

• Use the team
• Figure it out and own it
• Aim for elegant simplicity
• Empower diversity & inclusivity
• Do the right thing
• Be scrappy