Senior Platform/DevOps Engineer, High-Side with Security Clearance

Senior Platform/DevOps Engineer, High-Side (Active TS/SCI with CI Poly, Contingent Upon Award)
SynMax, Inc. National Capital Region, on-site in a customer SCIF | Full-time employee | $160,000 to $195,000 |
Contingent upon award, anticipated late 2026 to early 2027 About SynMax
SynMax is a Houston-based maritime intelligence company. Our Theia platform fuses synthetic aperture radar, radio frequency, AIS, and electro-optical data to deliver multi-INT maritime domain awareness to U.S. Government and commercial customers. Theia is fielded and operational today.

This program extends its capabilities into a classified environment for an Intelligence Community customer. The Role
We are seeking a Senior Platform/DevOps Engineer to own SynMax’s part of the technical migration of the
Theia platform into a Top Secret/SCI computing environment. You will take a mature, containerized, cloud- native analytics platform and stand it up on government- or prime-furnished infrastructure, integrate it with high-side data sources, help carry it through authorization to operate, and keep it running through the program’s base and option periods.

This role sits at the boundary between SynMax’s unclassified engineering team and the classified environment: you will translate what works on the low side into what runs on the high side. You will work alongside a large prime-contractor engineering team that supports
CI/CD, deployment, and cross-domain transfer, and you will establish SynMax’s processes with them early in the program. Your first weeks will include focused knowledge transfer with SynMax’s Theia engineering team.

What You Will Do • Work with the prime contractor’s engineers to deploy and operate Theia’s containerized services on the program’s high-side substrate, including Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift orchestration, storage, networking, and GPU-enabled compute, in AWS Secret/Top Secret regions (C2S/SC2S) or on- premises infrastructure • Support cluster lifecycle management in a disconnected environment, working within the prime contractor’s CI/CD and GitOps tooling: private container registries, mirrored package and image repositories, GitOps-based deployment (e.g., Argo CD), and infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible) • Build and maintain ingest pipelines that bring classified and unclassified data sources, including AIS, SAR, EO, and RF-derived products, into the platform at scale • Plan and execute, with the prime contractor, the initial bulk data cutover and establish recurring data synchronization within the security boundaries of the environment • Support the prime contractor’s authorization activities under ICD 503 and the CNSSI 1253 control overlays: produce SSP inputs and technical artifacts, implement and harden controls (STIGs, container image scanning, SBOMs), and remediate findings through ATO and continuous monitoring • Stand up monitoring, logging, and alerting, and diagnose performance, reliability, and integration issues where internet access and standard tooling are not available • Coordinate with SynMax’s unclassified engineering team to package, scan, and review software releases, and work with the prime contractor’s cross-domain team to transfer them across the security boundary under approved procedures • Provide operations and maintenance through option periods, including patching, upgrades, vulnerability management, and incident response • Document architecture, deployment procedures, and runbooks for government and prime contractor stakeholders ,What You Bring • Active TS/SCI clearance with CI polygraph and U.S. citizenship; the CI polygraph must have been completed within the last three years; current or recent work on a TS/SCI NGA program with an NGA- administered polygraph is strongly preferred • Eight or more years of professional software engineering experience, with at least three years deploying and operating production systems in classified (TS/SCI) environments • Deep hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes in production, including cluster administration and troubleshooting; Red Hat OpenShift experience strongly desired • Experience with AWS, ideally including classified regions (C2S/SC2S) or AWS GovCloud, and with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible) • CI/CD and GitOps experience (e.g., GitLab CI, Jenkins, Argo CD), and experience running them without internet connectivity • Proficiency in Python and at least one additional production language (e.g., Go, Java, C++), and fluency with Linux systems administration, particularly RHEL • Experience building and operating data pipelines for large geospatial or sensor datasets, on the order of tens to hundreds of terabytes • Working knowledge of RMF as applied in the IC (ICD 503, CNSSI 1253, NIST SP 800-53) and the practical work of getting a system through ATO • Ability to work independently on site with limited access to outside resources, and to communicate technical status clearly to program managers and government customers Preferred • DoD 8140/8570 IAT Level II certification (e.g., CompTIA Security+) or ability to obtain one within 90 days of start • Red Hat certifications (RHCE, OpenShift Administrator) or Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) • Security hardening in restricted environments: DISA STIGs, SCAP scanning, container image hardening (e.g., Iron Bank) • Enterprise storage integration (NFS, S3-compatible object storage, NetApp) • Streaming and workflow tools such as Kafka, Airflow, Argo Workflows, or Temporal • Geospatial data formats and tooling such as PostGIS, GDAL, GeoServer, or STAC • Experience with GPU-accelerated machine learning inference pipelines • Prior work on maritime domain awareness, remote sensing, or GEOINT systems • Experience as a subcontractor engineer embedded within a large prime contractor’s program team • Experience moving software and data across security boundaries under approved cross-domain and transfer procedures Employment Terms
This is a full-time employee position at $160,000 to $195,000, commensurate with experience.

Work is performed on site in the National Capital Region at a government or prime contractor facility. This position is not remote. Occasional travel to SynMax offices in Houston may be required for unclassified integration work. Contingent Upon Award
This position is contingent upon contract award. Anticipated award is between late 2026 and early 2027. SynMax intends to extend contingent offers to selected candidates in advance of award so the team is in ,place at program start. Contingent offers become effective only upon award, and no employment or compensation begins until that time.

Candidates should be available to start within 30 days of award. Candidates must hold an active TS/SCI clearance with CI polygraph at the time of application. U.S. citizenship is required. This position does not offer clearance sponsorship or upgrade. Candidates without a current, active TS/SCI with CI polygraph will not be considered. Equal Opportunity
SynMax, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status.