DevOps Team Lead FedRAMP

At Semperis, our mission is to be a Force for Good. Starting with being a great place to work. We believe that when people feel valued, supported, and empowered, they do their best work. That’s why we focus on creating an employee experience rooted in purpose, growth, and balance. Semperis has been recognized as one of America’s Fastest-Growing Cybersecurity Companies by the Inc. 5000, a DUNS 100 Top Startup to Work For, and a multi-year Inc. Best Workplace awardee.

About the Role

We're seeking a DevOps Team Lead to join our Engineering organization and take ownership of the deployment, orchestration, and secure operations of our FedRAMP-authorized identity and security products. You'll lead a team while staying intimately involved in the technical delivery and evolution of our DevOps strategy within a highly regulated federal environment.

This is a player-coach role: you'll architect and implement compliant solutions directly, while also guiding, mentoring, and enabling a team of engineers to operate at the highest standards of DevOps excellence and federal security compliance.

**The successful applicant will be working in FedRAMP environments, which requires U.S. citizenship. We’re also looking for someone with solid FedRAMP experience to help us move quickly and confidently in this space.

**We can only consider candidates based in Phoenix, Arizona or Washington, D.C.

What You'll Do

• Lead the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of build and release pipelines within FedRAMP boundary

• Provide day-to-day guidance and direct support to a team of DevOps engineers supporting FedRAMP operations

• Conduct 1:1s, deliver performance reviews, and promote professional development across the team

• Architect and execute cloud deployment strategies optimized for FedRAMP compliance, performance, and cost efficiency

• Review code, infrastructure configurations, and documentation to uphold FedRAMP security controls and best practices

• Train and mentor developers and stakeholders in Azure DevOps, Git workflows, and FedRAMP compliance requirements

• Collaborate with Infrastructure, Security, and Compliance teams to diagnose and resolve deployment challenges

• Maintain comprehensive documentation aligned with FedRAMP continuous monitoring requirements

• Troubleshoot issues during deployment and provide production support in FedRAMP staging and live environments

• Represent the team in cross-functional meetings, including interactions with federal customers and auditors

• Research and evaluate emerging technologies for FedRAMP-compliant adoption

Who You Are

You're a technical leader with deep DevOps expertise and a passion for building secure, compliant infrastructure. You thrive in regulated environments and understand how to balance security requirements with operational excellence. You're comfortable mentoring engineers while staying hands-on with architecture and implementation.

Minimum Qualifications

• U.S. citizenship required

• Active security clearance or ability to obtain one

• Prior experience supporting FedRAMP Moderate or High authorization

• 5+ years of DevOps/SRE experience in SaaS or cloud-native environments

• 2+ years in a formal engineering leadership role, including people management and performance reviews

• Strong understanding of the FedRAMP framework, its controls, and compliance requirements

• Proven experience with Government Cloud (or strong Azure commercial with ability to transition)

• Strong hands-on experience with:

  • Terraform and Terragrunt for Infrastructure as Code

  • Kubernetes (AKS) and Helm

  • Istio Service Mesh and Istio Ingress Gateways

  • ArgoCD and GitOps workflows

  • CI/CD pipelines via Azure DevOps

  • Zero Trust architecture, including PIM and RBAC

  • Observability tools: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Azure Monitor

  • Bash scripting; Python or Go for automation/tooling

• Experience implementing and maintaining security controls in production environments

• Comfortable supporting production systems in on-call rotation

• Strong communication, leadership, and troubleshooting abilities

• Experience with WAFs and secure network configurations in Azure

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven experience with Azure Government Cloud (or strong Azure commercial with ability to transition)

• Experience with FedRAMP continuous monitoring and annual assessment processes

• Hands-on experience with Kafka and event-driven systems

• Familiarity with microservices and distributed systems architecture

• Exposure to Azure API Management, Logic Apps, and other Azure Government native services

• Experience building and operating large-scale SaaS platforms in regulated environments

Key Responsibilities

Infrastructure & Cloud Operations

• Design and manage Azure Government Cloud infrastructure using IaC principles with Terraform and Terragrunt

• Maintain AKS clusters with Istio for secure, FedRAMP-compliant service-to-service communication

• Manage Azure Government resources including networking, Key Vault, Storage within FedRAMP boundary

• Configure OpenSearch clusters for efficient logging, audit trails, and data indexing per FedRAMP requirements

• Optimize CosmosDB performance with scaling strategies and cost oversight

DevOps Practices & Automation

• Lead the development of robust CI/CD pipelines that maintain FedRAMP security controls throughout the SDLC

• Establish and maintain GitOps workflows via ArgoCD with appropriate access controls and audit logging

• Author and maintain automation scripts that comply with security baselines

• Continuously evaluate and enhance deployment processes while maintaining FedRAMP authorization

Security & Compliance

• Implement and maintain FedRAMP security controls across the DevOps toolchain

• Design Zero Trust security architecture using Azure PIM and RBAC aligned with federal requirements

• Define and enforce least privilege access models per FedRAMP and NIST 800-53 controls

• Configure Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) and manage network security in Azure Government Cloud

• Support continuous monitoring activities and prepare artifacts for FedRAMP annual assessments

• Collaborate with Security and Compliance teams on POA&M remediation and security control validation

Monitoring & Reliability

• Deploy observability tooling using OpenTelemetry, Azure Monitor, and Application Insights with security event logging

• Participate in on-call rotation and incident response protocols, including security incident handling

• Lead post-incident analysis and drive implementation of long-term fixes while maintaining compliance

• Define and maintain reliability objectives, SLAs, and error budgets for FedRAMP environment

Why Join Semperis?
You’ll be part of a global team on the front lines of cybersecurity innovation. At Semperis, we celebrate curiosity, integrity, and people who take initiative. If you’re someone who sees the glass as half full, embraces challenges as growth opportunities, and values a healthy balance between work and life—we’d love to meet you.

**Semperis maintains office locations in several cities across the globe. Candidates who reside within 45 miles of one of our offices—or where the job description specifies a required location—will follow our hybrid work model. This includes working onsite some days per week and remotely the remaining days.

Semperis is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against an applicant or employee based on race, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, sex (including gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), age, physical or mental disability, veteran or military status, genetic information, citizenship, marital status, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law. The information collected by the Semperis application is solely to determine suitability for employment, verify identity, and maintain employment statistics. 

Applicants with disabilities may be entitled to reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act and/or other applicable state or local laws. A reasonable accommodation is a change in the way things are normally done which will ensure an equal employment opportunity without imposing undue hardship on Semperis. Please inform Semperis representative Anna Taylor, Director of Global Recruiting, if you need assistance completing this application or to otherwise participate in the application process.