Principal Cloud Engineer

SAIC is seeking a Cloud Engineer to support the AF TENCAP HOPE 2.0 contract onsite in Colorado Springs, CO. The AF TENCAP HOPE 2.0 contract bridges intelligence community collection architectures, capabilities, and technologies with DoD operational and tactical requirements. This effort will deliver rapid, innovative, and cost-effective capabilities to meet warfighter needs, and will include bringing national capabilities to bear across all warfighting domains spanning intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, combat applications, battlespace awareness, command and control, multi-level security and mission programs.

The Cloud Engineer will be a part of a close team that maintains, enhances and upgrades a myriad of applications and services, in an enterprise environment. As part of the team, you will participate in implementation and maintenance of On-Prem Cloud and IT Infrastructure to support the customer.

Responsibilities

• Provide mid to top-tier Kubernetes cloud engineering in on-prem heterogeneous environments.
• Develop and maintain automation for deployments/configuration management.
• Administer and manage multiple on-prem cloud environments.
• Monitor and remediate cloud infrastructure health, performance, and availability.
• Provide cloud operations support during exercises.
• Update cloud environments and apply DoD STIGs.
• Manage cloud infrastructure/services (Linux VMs, RKE2, Rancher, storage).
• Remediate vulnerabilities and respond to tasking orders.
• Maintain SOPs and troubleshooting guides.
• Assist teammates with infrastructure and server administration.
• Manage software installations and asset/application inventories.
• Draft/enhance documentation for problem resolution processes.
• Prepare technical justifications for hardware/software procurement.
• Execute other systems administration tasks as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• DoD 8140 System Administrator Intermediate Certification (Security+ CE or higher).
• Bachelor’s degree plus 4+ years' experience; 4 additional years of experience may substitute for a degree.
• Knowledge of DoD security compliance (e.g., STIGs, SCAP).
• Proficient in operating systems: RHEL, Rocky Linux.
• Understanding of network protocols (e.g., TCP/IP, DHCP, DNS).
• Expertise in deploying Rancher Kubernetes Engine 2 (RKE2) on-prem.
• Experience installing, configuring, and troubleshooting RKE2, including software like cert-manager, Keycloak, Grafana, Loki, Alloy, Longhorn, Rancher, and Argo CD.
• Skilled in using GitOps for automated deployments with Argo CD.
• Strong organizational skills with experience in documentation, log analysis, system audits, and record keeping.
• Adaptable to evolving system and support requirements.
• Strong technical writing skills for documenting plans, findings, and recommendations.
• Active Top Secret clearance with the ability to obtain TS/SCI.
• Must be a U.S. citizen.
• Based in Colorado Springs and able to work on-site 100%.

Desired Qualifications

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and/or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certification.
• Documented knowledge of configuration management tools (Ansible).
• Documented experience with scripting (e.g., shell, bash, python).
• Experience supporting enterprise authentication (e.g., LDAP, OIDC).
• Working knowledge of infrastructure hardware and appliances.