Platform Engineer

Platform Engineer

At ARA, we strive to hire valuable colleagues with not only the right skills but also those who demonstrate our core values of passion, freedom, service, and growth. As a platform engineer on our team, you will be the backbone of our strategic initiatives and will be responsible for developing technology critical to the success of our maturing programs dedicated to DoD efficiency and efficacy.

To be successful in this position, you will maintain and build upon existing network and domain environments, identify and drive opportunities to improve operational workflows, and create detailed documents and diagrams for IT infrastructure. You will be able to help design and implement a self-service cloud platform enabling users to deploy and connect a variety of cloud-enabled tools ranging from VM acquisition or GitLab, Argo, and Artifactory spin up, to launching virtual Jupyter environments and newly containerized DoD models and simulations.

You will also be able to administer, develop, configure, implement, and maintain Kubernetes clusters across cloud and on-prem environments. You will work closely with teams of software engineers to help design, develop, and implement clusters, operators, service meshes, application deployments, CI/CD pipelines, and more.

You will act as a go-to resource for choosing which cloud technologies and strategies to employ in which circumstances and for which use cases for software engineers across the business unit. You will be able to help marshal a program through Interim Authority to Test (IATT) and Authority to Operate (ATO).

At ARA, your career extends beyond project work with abundant opportunities for growth and innovation. We actively support cross-training and encourage you to contribute ideas to our cutting-edge R&D initiatives as well as our established operational programs. Expect to have a dynamic and challenging but rewarding career with unparalleled opportunities for personal and professional development.

Platform Engineer Requirements:

• U.S. Citizen capable of acquiring security clearance
• BS or higher in computer science, engineering, applied mathematics, or a related technical field along with 8+ years of relevant work experience. Equivalent professional experience (at least 13 years) will be considered for talented candidates without a degree
• Significant experience with Azure or AWS both from the dedicated dashboard/consoles as well as programmatically
• Functional familiarity with infrastructure automation (e.g., Terraform, Ansible)
• Demonstrable experience with Kubernetes and Docker
• Relocation to Raleigh, NC

Platform Engineer Preferred Experience and Skills:

• Experience with multiple cloud providers. Bonus for experience with multi-cloud deployment experience
• Knowledge of or experience with achieving IATT/ATO and deploying applications high side
• Experience with Zarf and Unicorn Delivery Service (UDS)
• Experience establishing non-trivial CI/CD pipelines
• Software engineering / application development background

Why ARA?

Do you want to work for a purpose? Applied Research Associates, Inc. (aka ARA) is an employee-owned international research and engineering company. We have been providing technically superior solutions to complex and challenging problems in the physical sciences since 1979. ARA has over 2,345 employee-owners and continues to grow rapidly. Together, our offices throughout the U.S. and Canada provide a broad range of technical expertise in defense, civil, and health technologies, computer software, and simulation, systems analysis, environmental technologies, and testing and measurement.

To find out more about what the Software Enterprise Division has to offer, visit our website at: https://www.ara.com/benefits/