DevOps Engineer
00100 LEIDOS, INC. · 1662 Intelligence Community Campus - Bethesda MD
$107,900–$195,050from the description
Jul 1, 2026
1662 Intelligence Community Campus - Bethesda MD
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A DevOps engineer role focused on deploying, maintaining, and improving a containerized microservices platform that supports an intelligence data discovery and OSINT processing program. Day-to-day work centers on managing Kubernetes infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines via GitLab and ArgoCD, a big-data pipeline built on Elasticsearch and Kafka, and PaaS solutions including GPU sharing in classified environments. The position suits an experienced engineer holding an active TS/SCI clearance and a DoD 8570 IAT Level II certification.
Senior level · 8+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · TS/SCI clearance · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
Posted 2 times — it's one opening, so apply once.
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). 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 is primarily on-site at the client location in Bethesda, MD (Washington DC metro CBSA); occasional remote tasks are mentioned but this is not a remote role.
The JD requires an active TS/SCI clearance AND the ability to obtain a TS/SCI with Polygraph — the active TS/SCI is the hard gate; the polygraph is an additional future requirement.
A DoD 8570.01-M IAT Level II or higher certification (e.g., Security+, CISSP) is explicitly required but names no specific technology tool, so it is not captured as a skill.
The degree requirement is effectively None: the JD accepts 'equivalent experience' in lieu of a BS, and the 8+ years figure applies to the non-degree path (6+ years with a Master's).
Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana (ELK stack) are listed under the required qualifications section ('Comfortable with…'); while 'comfortable with' is softer language, they appear within the required qualifications block alongside other hard gates.
ArgoCD, cert-manager, external-secrets, and ECK (Elasticsearch on Kubernetes) are listed under 'Familiarity with…' within the required qualifications block — section placement makes them required gates despite the softer framing.
The 'You will wow us even more if you have some of these' section is the explicit preferred/nice-to-have block; all skills drawn from it are marked preferred.
Kafka appears in both the required section (production big data pipeline) and the preferred section (experience with Kafka or other message passing systems); it is marked required based on the stronger required-section mention.
Prometheus/Grafana and OpenTelemetry are listed together as Kubernetes monitoring examples in the preferred section; Prometheus is used as the primary name with Grafana and OpenTelemetry as alternatives.
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
The employer publishes the full description on their own site — read it there ↗. Or sign in to read it here — it's free, and it also lets you track this application.