Senior DevOps Engineer (NOAA badge required)
Element 84 · Alexandria, VA
$145,000–$175,000from the description
Jul 20, 2026
Alexandria, VA
Jul 22, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior-level DevOps engineering role focused on designing, deploying, and operating cloud-native infrastructure — primarily on AWS, with some Azure — for a geospatial and Earth science software consultancy. Day-to-day work centers on infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, security compliance, and automation scripting, with some involvement in Generative AI application infrastructure. Suits an experienced cloud engineer comfortable leading technical decisions across multiple client engagements. Note: the position is contingent on a contract award and requires a NOAA badge.
Senior level · 6+ years · Remote · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 17,100 people nationally plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 12,800–22,200
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $138,970 (middle half $107,524–$175,762). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (10)
This is a contingent position — employment depends on Element 84 receiving a contract award AND the candidate obtaining a NOAA CAC badge. The NOAA badge is listed as a required qualification, but it is a post-hire credentialing step tied to the contract, not a pre-existing clearance gate; it is therefore not mapped to the clearance requirement.
The role requires applicants to be a US Person (citizen or legal permanent resident) with no sponsorship needed, now or in the future.
Remote work is permitted but only in specific states: AZ, CA, CO, DC, FL, IL (excluding Chicago), IN, KS, MD, MI, MN, MT, NH, NJ, OH, OK, OR, PA, SD, TX, UT, VA, or VT.
The 6+ years of overall experience requirement includes a sub-requirement of 3+ years specifically in cloud technologies; the overall years minimum is set to 6 (the role-level gate).
SOC confidence is Medium: the role is titled 'Senior DevOps Engineer' and involves significant infrastructure-as-code authoring, CI/CD pipeline development, and automation scripting (pointing to 15-1252 Software Developers), but also has meaningful operational/systems-administration duties. 15-1244 is the runner-up.
A B.S. in Computer Science or related field is listed under Preferred Qualifications with explicit acceptance of equivalent professional experience, so the degree requirement is set to None.
Cloud certifications are listed as required ('or willingness to obtain one'), but since the JD accepts a future willingness rather than a current credential, they are captured as preferred skills rather than hard gates.
Networking technologies (CloudFront, Route53, Load Balancers, API Gateway, VPCs, NACLs) are listed under Required Qualifications; CloudFront is used as the primary skill name with Route53 and API Gateway as alternatives. VPCs and NACLs are AWS-native networking constructs subsumed under the AWS skill.
Monitoring tools (CloudWatch, AWS Config, Kibana, Splunk, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Honeycomb) are listed as examples under Required Qualifications; CloudWatch is used as the primary with the others as alternatives.
Data storage/engineering tools (ElasticSearch, SQL, NoSQL, DynamoDB, Redshift, Athena, Glue) are listed as examples under Required Qualifications; ElasticSearch is used as the primary with the others as alternatives. SQL and NoSQL are generic concepts and are omitted as standalone skills.
Read the full posting
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