Clarity Innovations

Clarity Innovations

Senior Principal Platform Engineer (K8s)

Columbia, MD · Principal

Sponsorship not specified$120k-$345kDetected 12 days ago
PythonGoDistributed SystemsCode ReviewGitAWSAzureKubernetesHelmCI/CDLinuxGrafanaPlatform EngineeringData EngineeringCybersecuritySupply ChainTest AutomationDNSLeadership

About the role

  • As a Senior Principal Platform Engineer (Services), you will bridge the gap between development needs and production deployment environments.
  • Instead of just managing vendor charts, you will package, configure, and extend foundational services running on Kubernetes.

Responsibilities

  • Packaging Standards & Interfaces: Define reusable packaging patterns, schemas, validation rules, and automation that frontend and other teams can build on when enabling users to create bundles and packages.
  • OCI Image & Bundle Management: Build, validate, and maintain OCI images, deployment bundles, Helm charts, and Kubernetes manifests with a focus on reproducibility, versioning, and reliable delivery across deployment environments, including air-gapped, disconnected, on-premise systems.
  • Software-Driven Automation: Use Go, Python, and CI/CD automation to validate service behavior, reduce manual deployment steps, and improve the reliability of service delivery.
  • CI/CD Automation: Build and maintain GitLab CI pipelines that automate packaging, testing, scanning, validation, promotion, and publishing of service artifacts.
  • Maintain Architecture Records: Contribute to and execute Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) regarding service packaging standards, deployment patterns, security controls, and platform integration decisions.
  • Cross-Team Technical Leadership: Partner with and mentor engineers across frontend, backend, control plane, and infrastructure teams to help them adopt service packaging patterns, understand Kubernetes deployment constraints, and operate within a software-defined, control-plane-first approach to Kubernetes cluster management.
  • Define reusable packaging patterns, schemas, validation rules, and automation that frontend and other teams can build on when enabling users to create bundles and packages.
  • Build, validate, and maintain OCI images, deployment bundles, Helm charts, and Kubernetes manifests with a focus on reproducibility, versioning, and reliable delivery across deployment environments, including air-gapped, disconnected, on-premise systems.
  • Build and maintain GitLab CI pipelines that automate packaging, testing, scanning, validation, promotion, and publishing of service artifacts.
  • Partner with and mentor engineers across frontend, backend, control plane, and infrastructure teams to help them adopt service packaging patterns, understand Kubernetes deployment constraints, and operate within a software-defined, control-plane-first approach to Kubernetes cluster management.

Requirements

  • Secure Supply Chain Practices: Experience with vulnerability scanning, dependency management, SBOMs, artifact provenance, image signing, and secure promotion workflows for third-party software and containerized services.
  • Software Engineering Fundamentals: Strong professional software engineering experience, including Go and/or Python, automated testing, code review, debugging, and maintainable automation for platform delivery workflows.
  • Systems Thinker: Ability to view services, infrastructure, Kubernetes primitives, deployment workflows, and team boundaries as parts of one platform system rather than isolated components.
  • The ideal candidate is a highly independent engineer capable of driving complex initiatives from inception to completion with minimal supervision.
  • Proficiency with GitLab CI, GitOps workflows, FluxCD, and declarative configuration tools such as Helm and Kustomize to automate service packaging, validation, promotion, and deployment.
  • Experience with vulnerability scanning, dependency management, SBOMs, artifact provenance, image signing, and secure promotion workflows for third-party software and containerized services.
  • Hands-on experience with three or more categories of foundational platform services, such as identity and access management, secrets management, observability, service mesh, policy enforcement, or admission control.
  • Ability to view services, infrastructure, Kubernetes primitives, deployment workflows, and team boundaries as parts of one platform system rather than isolated components.
  • Advanced Kubernetes Engineering: 5+ years of hands-on experience deploying, scaling, and troubleshooting production services, with deep expertise in control loops, reconciliation behavior, and extension patterns (CRDs, Operators, webhooks, admission policies) that goes beyond standard managed services (EKS/AKS).
  • Service Packaging & Lifecycle Management: Deep experience packaging, configuring, upgrading, and maintaining Kubernetes-based services using OCI images, Helm charts, Kubernetes manifests, and deployment bundles, with attention to versioning, compatibility, rollback, and long-term maintainability.
  • Infrastructure Automation & CI/CD: Proficiency with GitLab CI, GitOps workflows, FluxCD, and declarative configuration tools such as Helm and Kustomize to automate service packaging, validation, promotion, and deployment.
  • Linux, Containers & Networking: Strong understanding of Linux, container runtimes, OCI images, DNS, TLS, ingress, service mesh concepts, network policy, and Kubernetes networking needed to troubleshoot services across cloud, on-premises, and air-gapped environments.
  • Platform Services Experience: Hands-on experience with three or more categories of foundational platform services, such as identity and access management, secrets management, observability, service mesh, policy enforcement, or admission control. Relevant technologies may include Keycloak, Vault, Grafana, Alloy, Mimir, Loki, Istio, Kyverno, OPA, or similar systems.
  • Defensive Engineering Mindset: An engineering approach that assumes distributed systems and network partitions will fail asynchronously. You naturally design highly available, self-healing control planes with robust fallback mechanisms.
  • Complex Systems Debugger: An investigative mindset capable of debugging complex Kubernetes and distributed service failures where resources, controllers, network dependencies, certificates, secrets, and startup order interact in subtle ways.
  • Extreme Ownership: A proven track record of acting as a technical steward for a service, platform capability, or subsystem, where you care as much about operational metrics, edge-case failures, maintainability, and technical debt as you do about delivering new functionality.

Nice to have

  • Air-Gapped or Regulated Environments: Experience delivering software into disconnected, restricted, regulated, or high-security environments.
  • Production Operations: Hands-on experience supporting production services, troubleshooting incidents, and improving reliability based on operational feedback.
  • Telemetry-Driven Debugging: Advanced capability using metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, alerts, and Kubernetes events to diagnose service and platform issues.
  • Service Lifecycle Ownership: Experience managing long-term service lifecycle concerns, including version upgrades, compatibility testing, deprecation planning, and repeatable release processes.

Compensation

  • $120,000 - $345,000

Benefits

  • Define validation, health check, rollback, and upgrade patterns that make service deployments repeatable and reliable across cloud, on-premises, and air-gapped environments.
  • All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

Company info

  • first software and data engineering platform modernizes data operations, utilizing advanced workflows, CI/CD, and secure DevSecOps practices.
  • We focus on challenges in Information Warfare, Cyber Operations, Operational Security, and Data Structuring, enabling end-to-end solutions that drive operational impact.
  • We are committed to delivering cutting-edge tools and capabilities that address the most complex national security challenges, empowering our partners to stay ahead of emerging threats and ensuring the success of their critical missions.
  • At Clarity, we are people-focused and set on being a destination employer for top talent, offering an environment where innovation thrives, careers grow, and individuals are valued.
  • Join us as we continue to lead innovation and tackle the most pressing challenges in national security.

Equal opportunity

  • We are an equal opportunity employer.
  • equal opportunity employer.
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