Staff Site Reliability & Systems Architect in Reston, Virginia at Seerist, Inc.
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Job Description
Staff Site Reliability & Classified Systems Architect
About Seerist
Seerist is the AI-enabled threat and risk intelligence platform trusted by more than 500 organizations worldwide, including over 20 percent of the Fortune 500 and more than 50 government agencies, across 10 global offices. We combine machine learning with expert human analysis to surface the disruptions that matter before they reach our customers’ people, facilities, and operations.
In June 2026 we launched an AI-native rebuild of our platform. Our government customers now want that capability in environments our commercial architecture cannot reach.
The Role
This is a new position with two connected mandates, and it is the most senior infrastructure role at Seerist.
First, you will own reliability, performance, and cost for the commercial AWS platform that runs Seerist today. We have no dedicated site reliability function, and this role establishes it.
Second, you will lead our compliance efforts across SOC-2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, CMMC, FedRAMP, AWS WAFR, and other customer specific security requirements.
Finally, if funded, we propose that you will architect and lead the build of a deployable environment for Seerist. This is a greenfield program. You will own the architecture, the accreditation path, and the technical relationship with our sponsor and assessors.
These mandates share more than they appear to. The controls, automation, and infrastructure discipline that make a classified accreditation achievable are the same ones that make a commercial platform reliable. We are looking for someone who sees that and can build both on one foundation.
Commercial Platform Ownership
- Own the AWS environment end to end. Architecture, provisioning, scaling, and administration of the production estate.
- Define and defend reliability targets. Establish SLOs and error budgets, and build alerting that engineers trust rather than mute.
- Build self-healing infrastructure. Automated remediation, graceful degradation, and failover that does not require a human at three in the morning.
- Own infrastructure as code in AWS CDK. Set the standard for how infrastructure changes get reviewed, tested, and rolled back.
- Operate our search and analytics tier. Tune OpenSearch clusters supporting a very large, continuously updating intelligence data set.
- Strengthen CI/CD on GitHub and observability in Datadog. Faster and safer deployment, and instrumentation that explains failures rather than just reporting them.
- Engineer the compliance controls. Implement and evidence the technical controls behind SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and ISO 42001.
- Lead incidents. Run the incident, write the blameless postmortem, and close the loop on the follow-up work.
DEPLOYABLE Program Leadership
- Own the target architecture. Design a capable environment, including the hosting strategy across AWS regions or equivalent accredited infrastructure.
- Lead the accreditation path. Drive the accreditation process toward an authority to operate, working with our sponsor, assessors, and security leadership.
- Translate the commercial product into a deployable context. Determine what carries over, what must be rebuilt, and what cannot cross the boundary at all.
- Be the technical face of the program. Work directly with customer stakeholders, and represent Seerist credibly in environments where trust is earned slowly.
- Build the operating model. Define how a small team develops, deploys, and operates across a boundary, without duplicating engineering effort twice over.
What We Are Looking For
Required
- Active TS clearance. This is a hard requirement and cannot be waived
- Ten or more years in infrastructure, platform, site reliability, or cloud architecture, including senior ownership of a production environment
- Direct experience architecting or accrediting classified or high-side cloud environments
- Working command of accreditation processes and a track record of moving a system toward an authority to operate
- Deep hands-on AWS expertise on the commercial side as well, with architecture decisions you can explain and defend
- Infrastructure as code fluency, ideally AWS CDK
- Experience with modern observability and CI/CD practice, Datadog and GitHub Actions preferred
- Ability to work directly with government sponsors and assessors, and to write for that audience
- Based in the greater Washington, DC metro area, in our Reston office three days per week, with the flexibility to work on site as the program requires
Strongly preferred
- OpenSearch or Elasticsearch operations at scale
- SOC 2, ISO 27001, or ISO 42001 control implementation
- Experience as the first or one of the first SREs in an organization
- FedRAMP High authorization experience
How We Work
Our values show up in how we hire and how we operate:
- We win as a Team
- We have a Growth Mindset
- We Empower Customer Success
- We have a Bias for Action
- We know the Outcomes and Deliver Results
What We Offer
- Opportunity to work in a fast-moving environment where your work is visible and your impact is immediate.
- Strong results-oriented, dynamic and diverse culture
- Competitive salary, bonus plan, 401(k) matching, and long-term incentives
- Comprehensive medical dental, and vision benefits.
- Flexible hybrid schedule with 3 days per week in office.
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Professional Development Stipend
- Paid Parental Leave