Senior DevOps / Platform Engineer (Kubernetes, GitLab & GitOps)

Are you an experienced DevOps or Platform Engineer who enjoys building cloud-native platforms, automating software deployments, and ensuring production systems remain secure, reliable, and scalable?

Do you have hands-on experience designing CI/CD pipelines, deploying applications to Kubernetes, and implementing GitOps automation?

Opportunity

Virtual Service Operations (VSO) is seeking an experienced Senior DevOps / Platform Engineer to support a high-visibility enterprise technology modernization initiative.

This initiative focuses on developing foundational platforms and services that enable secure data connectivity, interoperability, API integration, and emerging AI capabilities across a large, complex enterprise environment. The project involves building a shared platform that allows applications, services, and data systems to securely connect through standardized APIs and modern integration technologies, including Model Context Protocol (MCP). In this role, you will design, build, automate, and operate the deployment and operations foundation for a cloud-native enterprise platform.

You will take ownership of CI/CD automation, container builds and deployments, GitOps workflows, infrastructure provisioning, observability, and disaster recovery capabilities. The initial phase focuses on delivering a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), with opportunities to expand platform capabilities as adoption grows. This is a hands-on engineering position. We are looking for someone who has personally built and operated production cloud-native environments—not someone whose experience is limited to maintaining existing infrastructure or administering development tools.

Key Responsibilities

CI/CD Engineering & Deployment Automation

• Design, develop, implement, and maintain GitLab CI/CD pipelines supporting platform services from source code commit through production deployment.
• Automate software builds, testing, validation, packaging, and deployment processes.
• Build, scan, sign, and publish container images using Docker and associated container tooling.
• Develop standardized, repeatable deployment processes that improve reliability and reduce manual intervention.
• Collaborate with software development teams to integrate applications and shared services into automated delivery pipelines.

Kubernetes & Container Platform Engineering

• Deploy, configure, and operate containerized applications in production Kubernetes environments.
• Use Helm or Kustomize to package, configure, and manage Kubernetes application deployments.
• Implement and maintain GitOps deployment workflows using Argo CD, Flux, or comparable technologies.
• Establish version-controlled infrastructure and application configurations.
• Support platform upgrades, environment consistency, and operational scalability.
• Engineer zero-downtime deployments using rolling updates, blue/green deployments, or canary release strategies.
• Develop and test reliable rollback procedures to minimize service disruption.

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

• Design and implement infrastructure provisioning and configuration automation using Terraform, Ansible, or comparable Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools.
• Develop reusable infrastructure configurations and deployment templates.
• Automate environment creation, configuration, and maintenance across development, testing, and production environments.
• Write and maintain Bash and Python scripts supporting platform operations and automation.
• Improve deployment efficiency, consistency, and security through automation.

Monitoring, Observability & Reliability

• Design and implement observability solutions covering application and platform metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerting.
• Configure and maintain monitoring tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, Splunk, or comparable platforms.
• Establish monitoring and alerting processes to identify performance issues, service degradation, and potential failures.
• Troubleshoot platform reliability, deployment, and operational issues.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to improve system availability, performance, and operational resilience.

Backup, Recovery & Platform Resilience

• Design, implement, and test backup and recovery procedures for platform services and supporting data stores.
• Establish and validate disaster recovery processes aligned with defined Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).
• Support backup, restoration, and recovery testing across platform environments.
• Contribute to operational documentation, runbooks, and platform recovery procedures.
• Identify opportunities to improve platform reliability, scalability, and recoverability.

Security & Continuous Improvement

• Integrate security scanning and validation into automated build and deployment pipelines.
• Apply secure container build, image management, and deployment practices.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity and engineering teams to support security and compliance requirements.
• Contribute to platform architecture, operational standards, and technical documentation.
• Support the initial MVP implementation and future expansion of platform capabilities.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.
• Minimum of 3 years of hands-on experience building and operating production cloud-native platforms in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or platform engineering roles.
• Demonstrated experience designing and building GitLab CI/CD pipelines, including automated build, test, and deployment workflows.
• Hands-on production experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience deploying and managing Kubernetes applications using Helm or Kustomize.
• Experience implementing GitOps workflows using Argo CD or Flux.
• Experience automating infrastructure provisioning and configuration using Terraform, Ansible, or comparable tools.
• Proficiency writing automation scripts using Bash and Python.
• Experience implementing or maintaining at least one production observability stack, such as Prometheus/Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, Splunk, or comparable tools.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AWS cloud services, including Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).
• Experience implementing container supply-chain security practices, including vulnerability scanning, image signing, and Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs).
• Experience designing and implementing rolling, blue/green, or canary deployment strategies with automated rollback capabilities.
• Experience developing backup and disaster recovery processes for PostgreSQL, Redis, or comparable production data stores.
• Familiarity with Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).
• Experience with Site Reliability Engineering practices, including Service Level Objectives (SLOs), capacity planning, and reliability engineering.
• Experience operating multi-tenant cloud-native platforms.
• Familiarity with distributed tracing and advanced observability capabilities.
• Experience implementing DevSecOps practices in regulated or security-sensitive enterprise environments.
• Experience supporting enterprise modernization initiatives, shared services platforms, or large-scale cloud-native environments.

• This is a fully remote position. Candidates must be able to work independently, communicate effectively, and collaborate successfully with team members in a virtual work environment.
• Bachelor’s degree
• Minimum of 3 years of hands-on experience building and operating production cloud-native platforms in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or platform engineering roles.
• New hires assigned on this project will be required to undergo and pass drug tests per our client's contract requirements
• Please note that this specific position requires U.S. citizenship status

What is Important to Us:

• You are an excellent communicator in writing and speaking.
• You have the ability to work independently but also value teamwork.
• Your problem-solving skills are excellent.
• You are looking for a job where performance appraisals occur regularly, and you look forward to advancing your career.
• You seek a community of virtue-centered co-workers and clients.

What we offer you: As part of the VSO company, you will be part of a virtue-centered team who value their work and teammates. This is a no-jerk zone. We provide ongoing learning and development opportunities to foster continuous growth. We offer competitive salaries, health benefits, and flexible work arrangements.

More About VSO: VSO is a hybrid cloud and managed services consulting firm. Much of VSO’s success can be attributed to our deep partnerships with IT services industry leaders such as AWS, IBM, Microsoft and others. VSO leverages numerous other partner relationships so as to provide our customers with optimal support. Additionally, we take pride in taking care of our employees. We offer a wide variety of benefits for eligible employees related to health, retirement, professional development, and more! For more information, please visit our website at https://vso-inc.com/careers