Staff Platform Engineer

Who we are:

Raft (https://TeamRaft.com) is a customer-obsessed non-traditional small business with a purposeful focus on Distributed Data Systems, Platforms at Scale, and Complex Application Development, with headquarters in McLean, VA. Our range of clients includes innovative federal and public agencies leveraging design thinking, cutting-edge tech stack, and cloud-native ecosystem. We build digital solutions that impact the lives of millions of Americans.

We’re looking for an experienced Staff Platform Engineer to support our customers and join our passionate team of high-impact problem solvers. This is a unique opportunity to help build and shape a game-changing organization where we put our customers and people first.

About the role:

Our team is rapidly growing and looking for an experienced Staff Platform Engineer to lead development efforts and join our passionate team of high-impact problem solvers. We enjoy the challenges of human-centered design, security, and scale to create better outcomes for our federal agency partners.
What we are looking for:

• 5+ years creating, maintaining, and leading teams building production Kubernetes clusters via managed services (AKS, EKS, GKE) and/or self-managed installers (EKS-A, RKE2, or similar), including workload management and troubleshooting at enterprise scale
• 3+ years managing Kubernetes network resources (CNI solutions, NetworkPolicies, etc.)
• Experience deploying and maintaining platform services and tooling (Istio, Keycloak, Vault, Harbor, ArgoCD, CertManager, Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, FluentBit/FluentD), including metrics scraping and monitoring dashboard configuration
• 5+ years building production services on cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including compute (EC2/EBS, Azure VMs) and network resources (VPCs, Subnets, Security Groups, VNets, NSGs)
• 5+ years building developer platform services and APIs at production scale
• 3+ years in Identity and Access Lifecycle Management Operations and Controls
• Active Secret clearance; must obtain Security+ within 90 days of hir

Highly preferred:

• Experience hardening Kubernetes clusters via RBAC, Audit Policies, admission controllers (OPA Gatekeeper, Kyverno), image scanning (Trivy, Sysdig, NeuVector), NetworkPolicies, and CIS/CISA/NSA hardening guidance
• CI/CD experience writing automation to deploy Kubernetes applications at scale
• Experience with relational and non-relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch)
• Experience deploying, maintaining, and monitoring on-premises compute infrastructure (blade servers, edge devices, VMware VMs, etc.)
• Experience with modern programming languages such as Java, Python, or Go
• Experience building data-intensive platforms

Clearance Requirements:

• Active Secret Security Clearance 

Work Type: 

• Hybrid at Hanscom AFB, MA
• May require up to 15% travel

Salary Range: $150,000 to $180,000

• The determination of compensation is predicated upon a candidate's comprehensive experience, demonstrated skill, and proven abilities

What we will offer you:

• Highly competitive salary
• Fully covered healthcare, dental, and vision coverage
• 401(k) and company match
• Take as you need PTO + 11 paid holidays
• Education & training benefits
• Generous Referral Bonuses
• And More!

Our Vision Statement: 

We bridge the gap between humans and data through radical transparency and our obsession with the mission. 

Our Customer Obsession: 

We will approach every deliverable like it's a product. We will adopt a customer-obsessed mentality. As we grow, and our footprint becomes larger, teams and employees will treat each other not only as teammates but customers. We must live the customer-obsessed mindset, always. This will help us scale and it will translate to the interactions that our Rafters have with their clients and other product teams that they integrate with. Our culture will enable our success and set us apart from other companies.

How do we get there? 

Public-sector modernization is critical for us to live in a better world. We, at Raft, want to innovate and solve complex problems. And, if we are successful, our generation and the ones that follow us will live in a delightful, efficient, and accessible world where out-of-box thinking, and collaboration is a norm. 

Raft’s core philosophy is Ubuntu: I Am, Because We are. We support our “nadi” by elevating the other Rafters. We work as a hyper collaborative team where each team member brings a unique perspective, adding value that did not exist before. People make Raft special. We celebrate each other and our cognitive and cultural diversity. We are devoted to our practice of innovation and collaboration.