Tier 3 Platform Engineer SME

Peraton Overview

Peraton is a next-generation national security company that drives missions of consequence spanning the globe and extending to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. As the world’s leading mission capability integrator and transformative enterprise IT provider, we deliver trusted, highly differentiated solutions and technologies to protect our nation and allies. Peraton operates at the critical nexus between traditional and nontraditional threats across all domains: land, sea, space, air, and cyberspace. The company serves as a valued partner to essential government agencies and supports every branch of the U.S. armed forces. Each day, our employees do the can’t be done by solving the most daunting challenges facing our customers. Visit peraton.com to learn how we’re keeping people around the world safe and secure.

Responsibilities

Schedule: Rotating shifts within a 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM, seven-day on-site coverage window, plus participation in a shared after-hours on-call rotation.

About the Role

Peraton is seeking a Platform Engineer Subject Matter Expert (SME) to provide senior technical leadership for the operation, engineering, and sustainment of a mission-critical enterprise software platform supporting an Intelligence Community customer. The platform delivers a standardized developer and user experience across multiple classified enclaves, leveraging a zero trust, hub-and-spoke architecture.

The Platform Engineer SME will establish technical direction for platform operations, oversee complex engineering and sustainment activities, and serve as the senior technical authority for Tier 3 escalations and major incident response. This role will guide platform reliability, automation, infrastructure optimization, and operational excellence while ensuring engineering solutions align with enterprise architecture, security requirements, and mission needs.

In addition to hands-on technical leadership, the SME will serve as a shift lead, coordinating engineering and operational activities, mentoring technical personnel, and driving resolution of enterprise-wide issues. The SME will work closely with program leadership, architecture, cybersecurity, and partner organizations to ensure the platform remains secure, resilient, and available to mission users.

What You Will Do

• Establish technical direction and engineering standards for the deployment, operation, and sustainment of enterprise platform infrastructure and shared services.

• Lead the design, implementation, and optimization of platform capabilities across hybrid cloud and on-premises environments, including Kubernetes-based container orchestration platforms.

• Provide technical oversight of infrastructure as code, configuration management, automation, and CI/CD pipeline capabilities to ensure secure, scalable, and repeatable deployments.

• Guide implementation and sustainment of zero trust security controls, including identity-aware access, network segmentation, and least-privilege policies.

• Oversee technical onboarding and integration of mission tenants, applications, and shared services across the enterprise platform.

• Evaluate platform architecture, engineering practices, and operational processes to identify opportunities to improve availability, scalability, resiliency, security, and performance.

• Serve as the senior technical escalation authority for complex platform incidents involving compute, storage, networking, identity, cloud infrastructure, and container orchestration.

• Lead major incident response activities, coordinating technical resources, engineering teams, vendors, and partner organizations to restore mission services within established service levels.

• Direct root cause analysis and corrective action efforts for significant incidents, ensuring systemic issues are addressed through engineering improvements and automation.

• Establish operational standards, technical procedures, and escalation practices to improve incident response and reduce recurring service disruptions.

• Provide technical oversight of observability capabilities, including centralized logging, metrics, alerting, dashboards, and platform health monitoring.

• Partner with cybersecurity leadership to ensure platform security controls, continuous monitoring, and technical evidence remain aligned with RMF authorization and continuous ATO requirements.

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to Senior and Mid-Level engineers, establishing expectations for engineering quality, troubleshooting, documentation, and operational execution.

• Serve as shift lead, coordinating daily platform operations, assigning technical priorities, managing escalations, and ensuring continuity across rotating shifts.

• Coordinate with program leadership and customer stakeholders on platform health, operational risks, significant incidents, technical dependencies, and recommended improvements.

• Lead technical working sessions and collaborate with architecture, cybersecurity, development, and operations teams to resolve enterprise-level engineering challenges.

• Maintain and improve technical documentation, operational runbooks, incident response procedures, and knowledge management practices.

• Participate in rotating on-site shifts and the shared after-hours on-call rotation to support continuous platform operations.

Location: This position is fully onsite in Chantilly, VA.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Active TS/SCI clearance with Polygraph.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field, with 12 or more years of relevant experience. Additional 4 years of relevant experience may be substituted for a degree.

• Extensive experience engineering, operating, and sustaining production enterprise platforms using Kubernetes or Kubernetes-based container orchestration technologies.

• Extensive experience designing and supporting infrastructure across at least one major cloud environment (AWS, Azure, or a government cloud region) and hybrid cloud or on-premises environments.

• Extensive experience with infrastructure as code, configuration management, and automation technologies, including Terraform, Ansible, or similar tools.

• Experience leading the design and implementation of CI/CD pipelines and secure automated deployment processes.

• Demonstrated expertise troubleshooting complex enterprise infrastructure issues across Linux systems, cloud environments, networking, container platforms, and identity and access management.

• Extensive experience leading Tier 3 technical escalations, major incident response, and root cause analysis for production enterprise systems operating under defined service levels.

• Experience establishing technical standards, engineering practices, and operational procedures for platform engineering and sustainment teams.

• Demonstrated experience providing technical leadership, mentoring engineers, and coordinating multidisciplinary technical teams.

• Experience communicating technical issues, operational risks, and recommended solutions to senior technical and program stakeholders.

• DoD 8140 / 8570 IAT Level II certification, such as Security+ CE, or the ability to obtain the required certification within the established timeframe.

• Ability to work rotating shifts within the established seven-day on-site coverage window and participate in the shared after-hours on-call rotation.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience providing technical leadership for enterprise platforms operating across multiple classification levels or security enclaves, including cross-domain data movement.

• Extensive familiarity with zero trust architecture frameworks and their implementation across enterprise cloud infrastructure.

• Experience with IT service management (ITSM) platforms, including ServiceNow.

• Experience designing or overseeing enterprise observability solutions using Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, Elastic, or similar technologies.

• Experience leading RMF authorization support, continuous monitoring, and continuous Authority to Operate (cATO) activities.

• Advanced Kubernetes certifications, such as CKA or CKS, and/or advanced cloud professional certifications.

• Prior experience providing technical leadership on Intelligence Community or Department of Defense mission programs.

Target Salary Range

$135,000 - $216,000. This represents the typical salary range for this position. Salary is determined by various factors, including but not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the position, the individual’s experience, education, knowledge, skills, and competencies, as well as geographic location and business and contract considerations. Depending on the position, employees may be eligible for overtime, shift differential, and a discretionary bonus in addition to base pay.

Benefits Statement

Peraton offers eligible employees a variety of benefits including medical, dental, vision, life, health savings account, short/long term disability, EAP, parental leave, 401(k), paid time off (PTO) for vacation, and company paid holidays. A full listing of available benefits can be viewed at https://www.careers.peraton.com/benefits.

Application Statements

The application period for the job is estimated to be 30 days from the job posting date. However, this timeline may be shortened or extended depending on business needs and the availability of qualified candidates. By applying to this job, you are expressing interest in the role and the Company. During the review of your application, you may be required to participate in an on-camera interview, as well as participate in a process to verify your identity. Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools of any kind during Peraton interviews is strictly prohibited unless the candidate has obtained prior written authorization. All interview responses must be the candidate’s own.

EEO

EEO: Equal opportunity employer, including disability and protected veterans, or other characteristics protected by law.