Principal DevSecOps Engineer

About the Role 

Bluestaq is seeking a Principal DevSecOps Engineer to lead the evolution of our delivery platforms across mission-critical environments. This individual contributor role is focused on platform ownership, architecture, and cross-team enablement, shaping how software moves from development to production across programs, environments, and customers. You will define and mature the standards, automation, and platform capabilities that enable teams to ship secure, reliable software at speed while meeting compliance and operational requirements. 

Operating with a high degree of autonomy and influence, you will partner closely with engineering leadership, cybersecurity, systems, and program teams to align platform direction with mission needs. You will drive multi-quarter initiatives that improve scalability, resilience, and developer experience, while mentoring senior engineers and helping raise the bar for DevSecOps practices across the organization. 

 

Responsibilities  

Platform Ownership & Architecture 

• Serve as the technical owner for DevSecOps platforms across a major product ecosystem, mission area, or environment set. 

• Define and evolve reference architectures for CI/CD, Kubernetes, GitOps, infrastructure-as-code, secrets management, monitoring, and incident response. 

• Drive platform design decisions balancing speed, cost, reliability, and security in mission and production environments. 

• Establish reusable platform patterns, standards, and “golden paths” that enable consistent adoption across teams. 
  
  
• Use modern AI tools with judgment: integrating them into workflows where they're impactful, reviewing their outputs, and handling proprietary or sensitive data responsibly.

Delivery Platforms & Automation 

• Lead multi-quarter DevSecOps initiatives such as pipeline modernization, Kubernetes platform standardization, GitOps adoption, and environment strategy evolution. 

• Reduce manual deployment and operational toil through automation and shared platform capabilities. 

• Ensure delivery workflows scale across environments, programs, and teams without introducing fragility. 

 

Security & Compliance Integration 

• Embed security controls, policy enforcement, and compliance automation directly into delivery pipelines and platform tooling. 

• Partner with cybersecurity and compliance stakeholders to support ATO/C-ATO and other regulated delivery environments. 

• Define secure baselines for containerization, infrastructure, identity, and platform operations. 

 

Cross-Team Influence & Enablement 

• Partner with Engineering Managers, Architects, Cyber, Systems, IT, and Program teams to align platform capabilities with mission needs. 

• Shape standards for how teams build, deploy, and operate software across environments. 

• Coach and mentor Staff and Senior DevSecOps engineers; elevate engineering practices across teams. 

• Act as a trusted technical authority for complex DevSecOps and platform decisions. 

 

Reliability & Operational Excellence 

• Drive improvements in platform resilience, observability, and incident response. 

• Lead root-cause analysis and systemic improvements following platform failures. 

• Ensure delivery platforms are secure, debuggable, and production-ready—not just functional. 

 

Required Qualifications 

• Deep experience designing and operating cloud-native delivery platforms at scale. 

• Demonstrated ownership of DevSecOps architecture across multiple teams, services, or environments. 

• Advanced expertise in Kubernetes platform design and containerized workloads. 

• Strong experience with CI/CD pipeline architecture, automation, and delivery workflows. 

• Experience implementing infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or equivalent) in production environments. 

• Experience implementing configuration-as-code with Ansible. 

• Proven ability to embed security, policy enforcement, and compliance requirements into automated delivery pipelines. 

• Experience operating in regulated, mission-critical, or high-security environments. 

• Demonstrated ability to lead large technical initiatives without formal authority. 

• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills across engineering, cyber, infrastructure, and program teams. 

• Excellent communication skills; able to translate complex platform strategy into actionable technical direction. 

 

Preferred Qualifications 

• Experience designing and operating multi-tenant, multi-environment, or hybrid cloud platforms. 

• Experience supporting DoD, FedRAMP, or other compliance-driven delivery environments. 

• Background implementing GitOps workflows and environment management strategies. 

• Experience defining platform standards adopted across multiple teams or programs. 

• Expertise in observability systems, incident response models, and SLO-driven operations. 

• Experience mentoring and developing DevSecOps engineers at Senior or Staff levels. 

• Familiarity with secrets management, policy-as-code, and secure supply chain practices. 

• Exposure to large-scale modernization, platform migrations, or enterprise DevSecOps transformations. 

 

Required Education & Experience 

• High School Diploma/GED and 16+ years of relevant experience, OR 

• Associate degree in a related field and 14+ years of relevant experience, OR 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field and 12+ years of relevant experience, OR 

• Master’s degree in a related field and 10+ years of relevant experience, OR 

• PhD in a related field and 8+ years of relevant experience.