Cloud Engineer at Elder Research – Arlington, Virginia

Cloud Engineer

General Information

Requisition #679

Locations USA-VA-Arlington

Posting Date 03/17/2026

Security Clearance Required - Public Trust

Remote Type Hybrid

Time Type Full time

Description & Requirements

Elder Research Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of MANTECH international Corporation seeks a motivated, career and customer-oriented Junior Cloud Developer to join our team in Arlington, VA. This position is hybrid with 1-4+ days a month on site.

We are seeking a motivated Junior Cloud Developer to join our cloud infrastructure team. In this role, you will design, deploy, and maintain scalable cloud solutions on AWS, with a strong focus on Infrastructure as Code using AWS CloudFormation. You will work alongside senior engineers to build containerized workloads on ECS Fargate, package Python applications as production-grade Docker images, and contribute to a culture of operational excellence through observability, automation, and secure-by-default practices.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• CloudFormation & Infrastructure as Code (Primary)
  • Author, review, and maintain CloudFormation stacks for ECS clusters, services, task definitions, ALBs, Target Groups, IAM roles/policies, and ECR repositories, while parameterizing stacks for portability across dev, staging, and production and ensuring compliance with organizational standards, security baselines, and ACES/CCoE governance patterns.
  • Implement drift detection, manage stack updates, and utilize StackSets where appropriate; participate in stack reviews to ensure consistency, security, and reusability of infrastructure templates.
• ECS Fargate
  • Design and deploy Fargate services using awsvpc networking, task roles, and service-level autoscaling, including configuration of ALB routing, target groups, health checks, and deployment strategies such as blue/green and canary releases.
  • Define and maintain service-level observability using CloudWatch Logs, CloudWatch Metrics and Alarms, and AWS X-Ray tracing.
• Docker & Python
  • Convert Python projects into production-grade Docker images using multi-stage builds, slim base images, and reproducible build patterns, and publish/manage images in Amazon ECR following tagging and lifecycle policy standards.
  • Configure runtime settings and secrets via AWS Parameter Store and Secrets Manager, enforcing least-privilege access through task role–scoped IAM policies
• ???????Lambda (Secondary)
  • Build and maintain CloudFormation-deployed Lambda functions for lightweight control-plane tasks (e.g., policy orchestration, scheduled maintenance operations) while ensuring compliance with organizational controls and tagging policies per established operating procedures.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field — or equivalent practical experience.
• 1–2 years of experience with AWS services, including hands-on use of CloudFormation, ECS, ECR, IAM, and VPC networking.
• Must be a US Citizen and be able to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance prior to starting this position.
• Working knowledge of Docker: writing Dockerfiles, building images, and managing container lifecycles.
• Proficiency in Python; experience packaging Python applications for containerized deployments preferred.
• Familiarity with ALB configuration, target groups, listener rules, and health check behavior.
• Understanding of IAM fundamentals: roles, policies, trust relationships, and least-privilege principles.
• Basic familiarity with AWS CloudWatch for logging and monitoring.

???????Preferred Qualifications:

• Exposure to ECS Fargate task definitions, awsvpc networking mode, and service autoscaling configurations.
• Experience with blue/green or canary deployment strategies via AWS CodeDeploy or similar.
• Familiarity with AWS Parameter Store and/or Secrets Manager for runtime secret injection.
• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner or AWS Certified Developer – Associate certification (or in progress).
• Familiarity with Lambda development and event-driven architectures.
• Typescript

Clearance Requirements:

• Must be a US Citizen and be able to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance prior to starting this position.

About Elder Research, Inc - People Centered. Data Driven

Elder Research considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to disability or veteran status or any other status protected under any federal, state, or local law or regulation.

If you need a reasonable accommodation to apply for a position with Elder Research, please email us at careers@elderresearch.com and provide your name and contact information.

Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability/protected veterans