Principal Platform Engineer at Clarity Innovations
Herndon, VA
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Jul 1, 2026
Herndon, VA
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A platform engineering role centered on deploying, automating, and maintaining distributed edge computing infrastructure at remote sites for national security customers. Day-to-day work involves provisioning hardware, building CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, infrastructure-as-code automation, and observability for distributed clusters. Best suited to engineers with hands-on experience managing on-premises or edge environments, strong Linux/networking fundamentals, and the ability to obtain a Top Secret clearance.
Mid level · 3+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · Top Secret clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
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 $158,337 (middle half $126,441–$180,105).
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 (9)
The role sits at the boundary between software/platform engineering (building CI/CD pipelines, automation tooling, IaC) and infrastructure/systems administration (on-prem hardware setup, network integration, systems lifecycle). It was classified as 15-1252 because the primary deliverables are automation code, deployment pipelines, and platform tooling — but 15-1244 is a genuine runner-up given the heavy on-prem ops and hardware responsibilities.
The clearance requirement is stated as 'able to obtain and maintain a TS Security Clearance' (not yet held), making it a hard gate on eligibility. A current TS/SCI is listed under Preferred, not Required.
The title contains no seniority level word; 'Unspecified' is used for advertised seniority. The 3+ years requirement and scope of responsibilities support a Mid-level classification.
The role is listed as 'On-site Herndon / Hybrid / Remote with travel to edge locations' — candidates must be comfortable on-site 3–4 days per week in Herndon, VA, so remote=false is appropriate.
Ansible and Terraform appear together in the required qualifications as interchangeable examples of IaC/automation tools; they are emitted as a single requirement with each as an alternative for the other. Bash and PowerShell are similarly treated.
Kubernetes, Docker, Podman, and OpenShift are all listed together in the required containerization/orchestration bullet; Kubernetes is the primary with the others as alternatives.
Prometheus and Grafana appear only under Preferred (observability solutions for monitoring), so they are marked as preferred.
No compensation figures are provided in the posting.
Requires a Top Secret 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.
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