Staff Developer Operations Engineer

Summary

Join Skylight's cross-functional team supporting a high-impact Department of Defense (DoD) digital modernization effort. This initiative focuses on strengthening product leadership, human-centered design, and systems engineering across multiple agile product lines. As a member, you'll help stand up a team that brings unbiased product strategy, scalable service design practices, and rigorous systems thinking to the federal government. Your work will shape how this organization aligns its value streams to customer needs, improves enterprise architecture and planning, and builds internal capacity. Skylight's team will support multiple agile product lines and deliver measurable improvements in team alignment, efficiency, and delivery outcomes. This is a unique opportunity to help modernize how the government builds and scales software, with direct impact on national security outcomes.

Requirements

• Experience with Kubernetes and container orchestration in production environments
• Proficiency in designing and maintaining secure CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitLab CI, Jenkins)
• Familiarity with container security tools like Trivy or Anchore, and container hardening best practices
• Experience deploying to or operating within AWS GovCloud or other DoD-authorized cloud environments
• Knowledge of the Big Bang DevSecOps stack ( https://universe.bigbang.dso.mil ) and ecosystem (e.g., Istio, Keycloak, GitLab)
• Ability to model and document complex system interactions using modern systems engineering techniques
• Understanding of IL2–IL5 DoD compliance and security requirements
• Familiarity with tools and practices to enable monitoring, logging, auditability, and operational visibility
• Ability to work cross-functionally with product managers, designers, and government stakeholders
• Ability to obtain a Common Access Card (CAC), including successful completion of a DoD background investigation
• U.S. work location. All work must be performed within the U.S. (excluding territories), and certain federal contracts require U.S. citizenship
• Work authorization. You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship
• Background check. You may be required to successfully complete a company background check
• Federal contract qualifications. Some roles may require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute

Responsibilities

• Engineer resilient, secure infrastructure to support agile product teams delivering services at IL2–IL5 classification levels
• Provide hands-on systems engineering leadership and support including creating documentation, diagrams, and models aligned with DoD architectural frameworks
• Design and maintain CI/CD pipelines that enable continuous delivery of containerized applications, particularly those using the Big Bang stack
• Collaborate with DevSecOps teams to assess backlog items and estimate level of effort needed for implementation
• Implement and advocate for secure-by-default DevSecOps practices, including automated vulnerability scanning and remediation
• Automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration management, and standardize deployment processes
• Support onboarding and knowledge-sharing activities to build capacity within government and contractor teams
• Contribute to standardized architectural patterns and playbooks to align product lines to common delivery and security practices

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience writing clean, reusable code in at least one programming language
• Ability to support capacity-building through enablement, documentation, and knowledge transfer
• Experience contributing to open-source software or using open-source-first approaches in government environments
• Experience with application development, particularly web development and testing frameworks
• Federal systems experience supporting large-scale, modular DoD systems or DevSecOps platforms
• Civic tech background. Prior involvement in the civic tech space
• Remote teamwork. Experience collaborating effectively with distributed teams
• Existing or prior possession of a CAC with completed DoD background check

Benefits

• Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
• Paid time off, including 20 vacation days, 11 federal holidays, and flexible sick leave
• Up to 12 weeks paid time off for all eligible new birth, adoption, or foster parents
• Performance rewards, including annual salary increase, annual performance bonus, spot bonuses, and stock options
• Business development / sales bonuses
• Referral bonuses
• Annual $2,000 allowance for professional development
• Annual $750 allowance for tech-related purchases
• Annual swag budget of $100 to display your Skylight pride with some merchandise (hoodies, hats, and more)
• Dollar-for-dollar charity donation matching, up to $500 per year
• Access up to $1,000 before payday to cover emergency expenses
• Flexible, remote-friendly work environment
• An environment that empowers you to unleash your superpowers for public good