Lead DevOps Engineer
STR · Arlington, VA
$175,000–$240,000from the description
Jul 15, 2026
Arlington, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior-level infrastructure role focused on designing, building, and maintaining CI/CD pipelines and deployment tooling for national security software applications across multiple classification levels. The work involves managing cloud environments, Kubernetes clusters, and containerization tools, while coaching team members and coordinating with government and corporate IT stakeholders. The role suits an experienced DevOps practitioner comfortable operating in classified, hybrid government-contractor settings.
Senior level · 5+ years · Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH · Bachelor's required · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 4 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
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $169,742 (middle half $134,780–$187,781). 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 (8)
The role is titled 'Lead DevOps Engineer' but carries no explicit seniority level word (Junior/Mid/Senior/Staff/Principal) in the title itself — advertised seniority is therefore Unspecified. The actual requirements (5+ years, team leadership, multi-classification-level CI/CD ownership, customer liaison) support a Senior classification.
The posting lists four possible work locations: San Diego CA, Denver CO, Arlington VA, and Boston MA. Boston is used as the representative CBSA; the role is hybrid (2–3 days on-site at STR or government facilities per week) and is NOT fully remote.
The clearance requirement is 'Active US Security Clearance with SCI Eligibility,' which maps to TS/SCI. The 'Even Better' section notes an active Top Secret clearance as a bonus, implying the hard gate is SCI eligibility (not necessarily a full TS adjudication), but TS/SCI is the closest standard classification.
A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field is explicitly required alongside the 5-year experience floor; an advanced degree is listed under 'Even Better' (preferred only).
Docker and Podman are listed together as distinct containerization technologies under the required section and are emitted as separate skills. EKS and Rancher are listed as interchangeable Kubernetes management solutions and are emitted as one skill with an alternative.
GitOps tools (ArgoCD, Flux), Terraform, artifact repositories (Nexus, Artifactory), and code analysis tools (SonarQube, Coverity) all appear under the 'Even Better' preferred section.
The SOC classification is a genuine judgment call: the role writes and maintains CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code (software-building activity → 15-1252), but also has a strong systems/operations flavor (Linux admin, monitoring, compliance with DoD standards). 15-1252 is chosen as primary because the JD emphasizes designing and developing tooling and pipelines; 15-1244 is noted as the runner-up.
Requires a TS/SCI clearance — the cleared population is a small fraction of this occupation, so the real candidate pool is materially smaller than the estimate below, which does not model clearance.
Read the full posting
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