Chief DevOps Engineer in Washington, District of Columbia at Initiate Government Solutions

Founded in 2007, Initiate Government Solutions (IGS) is a Woman-Owned Small Business and a fully remote IT services provider supporting federal partners nationwide. We deliver innovative Enterprise IT and Health Services solutions with a strong focus on data analytics, health informatics, cloud migration, AI, and the modernization of federal information systems.

Our vision is to be a health IT trendsetter, continuing to solve the nation’s most challenging healthcare IT issues by conceiving, designing, and building solid, creative, and innovative open-source solutions.

Our mission is to innovate, design, and deliver tailored solutions that balance technical advancement with cost-awareness while providing exceptional service.

IGS is currently recruiting a remote Chief DevOps Engineer to support our work. Please note the role is contingent upon award.

Assignment of Work and Travel:

This is a remote access assignment. The Candidate will work remotely daily and will remotely access IGS systems and therein use approved IGS provided communications systems. Travel is not required; however, the candidate may be required to attend onsite client meetings as requested.

The Chief DevOps Engineer will be responsible for ensuring the availability, reliability, security, and performance of software-based systems operating in a 24x7x365 environment. The role will provide oversight and technical leadership to operations personnel, establish effective incident and trouble-ticket management processes, implement automation and monitoring capabilities, and promote modern DevOps and DevSecOps practices.

Responsibilities and Duties (Included but not limited to):

• Provide technical and operational leadership for 24x7x365 production software systems, ensuring system availability, reliability, performance, and security.
• Lead and oversee a DevOps/operations team responsible for production support, deployment, monitoring, incident response, troubleshooting, and system maintenance.
• Lead Incident Management activities for software-based systems, including incident identification, triage, escalation, resolution, communication, and post-incident analysis.
• Oversee the operation and administration of a trouble-ticket management system, ensuring tickets are appropriately prioritized, assigned, tracked, escalated, resolved, and documented.
• Develop and maintain incident response procedures, escalation processes, runbooks, standard operating procedures, and operational documentation.
• Lead the implementation and continuous improvement of CI/CD pipelines to enable reliable and frequent application releases.
• Drive daily and/or weekly release cycles while maintaining appropriate testing, security, quality, and operational controls.
• Implement and optimize automated build, testing, security scanning, deployment, and validation processes.
• Utilize modern DevOps and DevSecOps tools and practices, including source control, continuous integration, continuous delivery/deployment, automated testing, Infrastructure as Code, monitoring, logging, and observability.
• Participate in production readiness reviews, architecture reviews, change management activities, and release planning.
• Support security, compliance, and operational requirements throughout the system lifecycle.
• Other duties as assigned

• Bachelor’s degree, Degree in any of the following: Business Administration, Business Management, Computer Science, Information Systems, Information Resource Management, Industrial Engineering, Operations Research or related fields.
• Substitutions: Certifications in relevant technology plus a minimum of 5 years of relevant experience or a minimum of 7 years of relevant experience may be substituted for education.
• Expertise running a 24x7x365 Software based System for at least 6 months.
• Expertise with oversight of an operations team of at least 5 people for at least one year.
• Expertise in Incident Management for a software-based system.
• Expertise with oversight of a team running a trouble ticket system.
• Demonstrated success using modern DevOps methods and tools including automated testing tools and monitoring tools.
• Demonstrated ability to drive frequent release cycles (daily/weekly).
• Demonstrated expertise in Incident Management for a software-based production system.
• Demonstrated experience overseeing a team responsible for operating and managing a trouble-ticket system.
• Demonstrated success implementing and using modern DevOps methods and tools, including automated testing and system/application monitoring tools.
• Ability to work in the United States without sponsorship
• Ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust

Preferred Qualifications and Core Competencies:

• Hands-on experience with AWS/AWS GovCloud and/or Microsoft Azure/Azure Government.
• Experience with CI/CD and automation technologies such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, AWS CodePipeline, Azure DevOps, or GitLab CI/CD.

Successful IGS employees embody the following Core Values:

• Integrity, Honesty, and Ethics: We conduct our business with the highest level of ethics. Doing things like being accountable for mistakes, accepting helpful criticism, and following through on commitments to ourselves, each other, and our customers.
• Empathy, Emotional Intelligence: How we interact with others including peers, colleagues, stakeholders, and customers’ matters. We take collective responsibility to create an environment where colleagues and customers feel valued, included, and respected. We work within a diverse, integrated, and collaborative team to drive towards accomplishing the larger mission. We conscientiously and meticulously learn about our customers’ and end-users’ business drivers and challenges to ensure solutions meet not only technical needs but also support their mission.
• Strong Work Ethic (Reliability, Dedication, Productivity): We are driven by a strong, self-motivated, and results-driven work ethic. We are reliable, accountable, proactive, and tenacious and will do what it takes to get the job done.
• Life-Long Learner (Curious, Perspective, Goal Oriented): We challenge ourselves to continually learn and improve ourselves. We strive to be an expert in our field, continuously honing our craft, and finding solutions where others see problems.

Compensation: There are a host of factors that can influence final salary, including, but not limited to, geographic location, Federal Government contract labor categories and contract wage rates, relevant prior work experience, specific skills and competencies, education, and certifications.

Benefits: Initiate Government Solutions offers competitive compensation and a robust benefits package, including comprehensive medical, dental, and vision care, matching 401K and profit sharing, paid time off, training time for personal development, flexible spending accounts, employer-paid life insurance, employer-paid short and long term disability coverage, an education assistance program with potential merit increases for obtaining a work-related certification, employee recognition, and referral programs, spot bonuses, and other benefits that help provide financial protection for the employee and their family.

Initiate Government Solutions participates in the Electronic Employment Verification Program.