Principal Platform Engineer (IAC)

Principal Platform Engineer (IAC)

Location: Richardson, TX (Onsite)

Clearance (Non-Negotiable): Active TS/SCI with CI Poly required day one

Salary: $190K – $207K

About Talent Stack:

Talent Stack LLC is a woman-owned recruiting firm specializing in cleared and technical placements supporting national security programs.

This role supports a confidential defense client working on a large-scale, strategic system.

The Opportunity:

You will lead and support the development and maintenance of a modern Infrastructure as Code (IaC) ecosystem supporting a hybrid-cloud enterprise environment.

This environment includes servers, workstations, storage, networking, and specialized hardware systems that form the backbone for development and testing of a critical national asset.

This is a true principal-level role — combining:

• Hands-on engineering
• Platform architecture
• Automation strategy
• Configuration and baseline control

What You’ll Do

• Lead design and implementation of enterprise-scale IaC solutions
• Drive automation using Terraform, Ansible, and scripting frameworks
• Lead containerization and orchestration (Kubernetes/Docker)
• Architect and optimize CI/CD pipelines and platform integrations
• Support and integrate COTS/FOSS tools (LDAP, RHEL, Consul, Tenable)
• Provide technical leadership and guidance across engineering teams
• Ensure system scalability, performance, and reliability
• Maintain documentation, configuration control, and system baselines
• Support deployment efforts, including occasional customer site work

Required Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in STEM (Masters Degree Preferred)
• 8+ years of experience in platform, DevOps, or infrastructure engineering
• Proven experience leading IaC implementations at scale
• Deep expertise in Linux (RHEL), Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes
• Strong experience with CI/CD pipeline architecture
• Experience with hybrid cloud and enterprise systems
• Experience working in Agile/SAFe environments
• Active TS/SCI Required (CI Poly preferred)
• U.S. Citizenship required

Preferred

• Programming experience (Python, Go, Java, etc.)
• Experience with Atlassian suite, Jenkins, Artifactory
• Experience with Kubernetes deployments
• Exposure to MBSE environments
• Security+ (or ability to obtain)

Who This Is For

Someone who sets technical direction, owns architecture decisions, and still stays hands-on.

Clearance Requirement:

This position requires an active and transferable TS/SCI security clearance required with (CI polygraph preferred) Candidates who do not currently hold this clearance will not be considered. U.S. Citizenship is required.

Submission Disclaimer

Talent Stack LLC does not accept unsolicited resumes from third-party agencies. Any outside submissions will not be recognized.