Cloud DevSecOps Engineer (Secret Clearance) at Red Alpha
Columbia, MD
$180,000–$240,000from the description
Jul 7, 2026
Columbia, MD
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior cloud engineering role focused on designing, deploying, and tuning large-scale Kubernetes and AWS GovCloud infrastructure — including IL5/IL6 environments — for defense-sector customers. The work involves DoD DevSecOps pipeline development, infrastructure-as-code in disconnected environments, and application performance tuning. Suited to an experienced engineer holding an active TS/SCI with Polygraph clearance and at least eight years of relevant software engineering background.
Senior level · 8+ years · National · Bachelor's required · TS/SCI 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 $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)
No work location or metro area is specified in the posting. Given the TS/SCI with Polygraph requirement and DoD/GovCloud focus, the role is almost certainly on-site at a cleared facility, but the specific location is not disclosed.
The role is classified as Software Developers (15-1252) rather than Systems Administrators (15-1244) because the JD emphasizes building and shipping code: cDSO/DevSecOps pipeline development, Infrastructure-as-Code with Terraform and Helm, and cluster-building at scale — all active engineering deliverables. The runner-up is 15-1244 given the infrastructure and cloud operations framing.
AWS is listed under the general 'all cloud engineers' requirements section with 'such as AWS, Azure, Oracle, or Google Cloud' — the qualifier means the specific platform is interchangeable, so alternatives are captured accordingly, but cloud platform proficiency itself is a hard gate.
Amazon EKS is listed as an alternative to Kubernetes since the JD presents them together ('Kubernetes / Amazon EKS') as a single requirement.
IL5 and IL6 environment experience is captured under the AWS GovCloud skill, as the JD presents them as a single compound requirement.
Container scanning and hardened images are captured under Iron Bank, as the JD groups them as part of the cDSO/DoD DevSecOps pipeline requirement.
Application performance tuning at scale (gaming/simulation workloads) and Well-Architected Framework alignment appear in the role-specific requirements section but name no specific tool or technology, so they are omitted from the skills list per extraction rules.
AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification is listed under the 'important but not necessarily mandatory' section — treated as preferred.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): AWS Solutions Architect Professional.
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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