Sr. Principal Platform Engineer
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/infrastructure engineering role supporting cyber operations systems for national security customers. Day-to-day work centers on designing and operating Kubernetes clusters, building CI/CD and GitOps pipelines, managing infrastructure as code, and maintaining observability and security tooling across development and production environments. Suited to a seasoned engineer with 8+ years of hands-on platform or full-stack experience and an active Top Secret clearance.
Senior level · 8+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · 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 (8)
SOC classification is Medium confidence: the role writes and ships infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, and automation (pointing to 15-1252 Software Developers), but a meaningful portion of the day-to-day work is operating and maintaining Kubernetes environments (pointing to 15-1244). The balance of responsibilities — designing systems, building pipelines, and coding in Go/Python — tips it toward 15-1252.
The clearance requirement is stated as 'Current Top Secret security clearance' (a hard gate). SCI eligibility appears only under Preferred Qualifications, so it is not treated as a gate; the role does not explicitly require TS/SCI.
Degree requirement is effectively None: the JD explicitly states the Bachelor's degree requirement 'can be met with four years of hands-on experience in an Engineering or similar full-time position,' making equivalent experience an accepted substitute.
Grafana appears in the Responsibilities narrative alongside Prometheus rather than in the Required Qualifications section; it is marked preferred accordingly.
Kustomize and Istio appear in the Responsibilities section but are explicitly called out only under Preferred Qualifications as a hard requirement; Kustomize is mentioned in responsibilities context while Istio is listed under Preferred — both are marked preferred.
The 'Go, Python, etc.' phrasing in Required Qualifications names two languages as interchangeable examples of compiled/scripting proficiency; Go is listed as primary with Python as an alternative.
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.
Read the full posting
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