Software Developer (Systems Software) - DevOps
Ardent Principles, Inc. · Chantilly, VA
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Jul 9, 2026
Chantilly, VA
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A full-time, fully onsite DevOps-focused software developer role requiring an active TS/SCI clearance with Full Scope Polygraph. Day-to-day work centers on managing Kubernetes environments, writing infrastructure-as-code with Terraform, building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, and working with AWS services and Bash scripting. Familiarity with tools like ArgoCD, Prometheus/Grafana, and Elasticsearch is a plus.
Senior level · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
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.
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 (5)
An active TS/SCI with Full Scope Polygraph is an explicit hard gate — candidates without it cannot be considered.
The role is titled 'Software Developer (Systems Software) - DevOps' and the required skills are infrastructure/platform-oriented (Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS, Bash, Helm), making it a genuine borderline between Software Developers (15-1252) and Systems Administrators (15-1244). The emphasis on building and automating infrastructure rather than operating existing systems tips the classification toward 15-1252, but 15-1244 is a credible runner-up.
Compensation is described only as 'Highly Competitive Salary' with no figures provided.
All skills under 'Highly Desired Qualifications' are explicitly stated as 'not mandatory' and are marked preferred accordingly. Prometheus and Grafana are listed together as a monitoring/logging pair and treated as interchangeable alternatives within that single requirement.
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.
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