Software Engineer in Deployment - JobID-0241 at Innovative Defense Technologies
Arlington, VA
$135,000–$273,000
Jun 29, 2026
Arlington, VA
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A leadership-oriented engineering role focused on building and maintaining Infrastructure as Code for automated deployment and configuration of a Kubernetes-based, multi-site microservice application. The position involves managing a small team, operating Kubernetes clusters in both standard and air-gapped classified environments, and troubleshooting deployment issues. Suited to experienced engineers with strong container orchestration and Linux backgrounds who are comfortable holding a security clearance.
Senior level · 7+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Secret clearance · Full-time
Pay in the description: $135,000–$273,000
“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 $154,930 (middle half $123,720–$176,230). 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)
The role blends Infrastructure-as-Code software development with Kubernetes cluster operations and team leadership; 15-1252 (Software Developers) was chosen because the primary deliverable is writing and shipping IaC software, but 15-1244 (Network and Computer Systems Administrators) is a genuine runner-up given the heavy operational/deployment focus.
The title carries no seniority level word; 'Unspecified' is set for advertised seniority. The 7+ years requirement and team-lead scope support Senior.
The posting lists two overlapping pay bands ($135k–$231k and $164k–$273k) and notes IDT is filling multiple levels; the header figure ($135k–$273k) spanning both bands is used for the compensation range.
A Bachelor's degree is listed as required but the JD explicitly accepts 'equivalent full-time professional experience' as a substitute, so the degree requirement is set to None.
Networking skills (TCP/IP, DNS, Load Balancing, Firewall, VLANs) are listed in the required section; TCP/IP and DNS are captured as named skills. Load Balancing, Firewall, and VLANs are general networking concepts rather than specific named tools and are omitted per schema rules.
Automation tooling (Ansible, Terraform, Puppet, Salt) is presented as an 'or similar' list in the required section; Ansible is the primary with the others as alternatives.
Hypervisor/virtualization (VMware, KVM, EC2) is similarly an interchangeable list in the required section; VMware is primary with KVM and EC2 as alternatives.
AI coding assistants / LLMs are explicitly called out in the required section as a hard gate on aptitude for AI tooling.
RKE2, Rook/Ceph, NFS, Git, Jenkins, Artifactory, AWS/Azure, and DevSecOps experience all appear under the 'What Makes You Stand Out' (preferred) section.
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.
Read the full posting
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