Platform Engineer - Navy (FedD174/FedD175) at Defense Unicorns
$148,750–$201,250
Jul 23, 2026
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Jul 25, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A platform engineering role supporting a U.S. Navy program, sitting at the intersection of DevOps and application security. Day-to-day work involves maintaining Kubernetes clusters, building CI/CD pipelines, implementing infrastructure as code, and bridging application teams with the underlying platform. The role suits an experienced engineer with a security clearance who is comfortable across cloud-native tooling, secure coding practices, and occasional mentorship of junior engineers.
Senior level · Remote · Secret clearance
“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.
Why we read it this way (7)
Active Secret clearance is explicitly required to apply — this is a hard gate stated in the opening line of the posting.
All technical skills appear under a 'Preferred Experience and Qualifications' heading or in narrative/responsibilities prose — none are placed under a hard-requirements gate, so all are marked preferred.
Tofu (OpenTofu) is listed as the primary IaC tool; Terraform is the well-known interchangeable predecessor/alternative and is listed in alternatives accordingly.
EKS and RKE2 are both named as Kubernetes distribution examples ('i.e. EKS & RKE2') — they are distinct platforms but listed as alternatives to each other since the role requires experience with Kubernetes clusters on 'various distributions'.
DoD 8570 IAT II certification (e.g. Security+, CySA+) is mentioned as preferred ('Possess or ability to obtain') — this is a certification, not a named technology, so it is not emitted as a skill.
The role sits between 15-1252 (Software Developers — writes IaC, CI/CD pipelines, platform code in Go) and 15-1244 (Systems Admins — operates Kubernetes clusters, runner deployments, infrastructure maintenance). The emphasis on coding, GitOps, and platform development tips the classification to 15-1252, with 15-1244 as the runner-up.
Requires a 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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