Reliability engineer Jobs in Washington, DC

Zachary Piper Solutions is seeking an experienced Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) to support the deployment and sustainment of systems across classified, air-gapped, and government cloud environments. This role blends operations, security, and reliability engineering, and is well-suited for engineers who excel in secure deployments, classified cloud configurations, and hands-on environment ownership.

Unlike a traditional platform or internal tooling role, this position works directly with government customers, deploying and maintaining software in Secret and higher environments, including AWS C2E, AWS GovCloud, IL-enclave clouds, and on-prem classified infrastructure.

You will own the reliability, security posture, and day-to-day operational health of these environments while partnering closely with engineering and mission operations teams.

This is a Hybrid position based out of Los Angeles, CA and requires an active Secret or TS/SCI security clearance

Responsibilities of the Site Reliability Engineer (SRE):

• Deploy, operate, and maintain Quindar software in air-gapped, classified, and customer-owned cloud or on-prem environments
• Manage daily operations at government sites, ensuring availability, performance, and security compliance
• Implement, test, and sustain infrastructure configurations in AWS C2E and other classified or enclave environments
• Ensure deployments align with NIST 800-171, SOC 2, and FedRAMP Moderate requirements
• Drive container hardening, image scanning, secure configuration management, and compliance controls
• Participate in incident response and 24/7 on-call rotation, troubleshooting complex, mission-critical distributed systems
• Automate operational workflows to reduce manual effort and increase deployment reliability
• Collaborate with backend, frontend, and mission/flight operations teams to maintain system health
• Contribute to best practices around availability, latency, performance, and observability in classified environments

Required Technical Skills for the SRE:

• Strong experience with Kubernetes, containerized workloads, and serverless architectures
• Hands-on expertise with AWS EKS or enterprise Kubernetes platforms (Rancher, OpenShift)
• Experience deploying systems in classified, air-gapped, IL-enclave, GovCloud, C2S/C2E, or DoD/IC environments
• Proficiency with Python and Terraform (or similar infrastructure-as-code tools)
• Solid understanding of: Secure networking (VPNs, TLS/HTTPS, ALB/NLB, VPC peering, cross-enclave connectivity)API-based and distributed system architecturesNoSQL and relational databases, caching layers, and event-driven systems
• Experience with observability tooling (Grafana LGTM, Datadog, or similar)
• Strong Linux/Unix fundamentals
• Familiarity with identity and access management (Auth0, Keycloak, AWS IAM, ICAM patterns)
• Strong Git fundamentals and experience supporting deployments across multiple classification levels
• Demonstrated SecOps / DevSecOps experience (security and operations prioritized over pure platform design)

Qualifications for the SRE:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field
• 3+ years of experience in SRE, DevOps, platform, reliability, or infrastructure engineering
• Active . Security Clearance (Secret required; TS/SCI preferred)
• Prior experience supporting federal, DoD, or Intelligence Community systems strongly preferred
• Experience supporting ATO or authorization processes a plus
• Ability to operate independently in secure, customer-facing environments

What We’re Looking For:

We are intentionally selective and focused on candidates with directly relevant experience. Ideal candidates bring:

• Hands-on experience deploying software into classified or air-gapped environments
• A strong AWS background (GovCloud preferred)
• A security-first mindset with disciplined operational practices
• Comfort wearing a full DevSecOps hat, with emphasis on reliability and secure operations

Compensation & Benefits:

• $140,000 - 180,000+ *Dependent on experience*
• Comprehensive Benefits with extremely generous PTO and Bonuses!
• Hybrid flexibility

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