Operations Jobs in District of Columbia

Second Front Systems (2F) is seeking a Senior Enterprise Customer Operations Engineer to lead complex technical support engagements for customers deployed on Game Warden, our FedRAMP High-certified, Kubernetes-native DevSecOps platform. Our customers are warfighters and national security professionals operating across classified and unclassified government networks. The stakes are high—and so is the standard for how we support them.

As a Senior Enterprise Customer Operations Engineer on the Customer Support team, you will lead resolution of the most technically complex customer issues, serve as the primary technical escalation point within the support organization, and drive systemic improvements to how 2F supports customers at scale. You'll work closely with Platform Engineering, Product, Implementation Engineering, and Mission Success to ensure operational stability across our customer base while building the knowledge, tooling, and processes that elevate the entire Customer Support team.

This role is ideal for senior engineers who combine deep technical expertise with strong customer-facing skills, a mentorship orientation, and a passion for building reliable, scalable support operations in mission-critical environments. Our mission extends beyond resolving individual issues—we strive to establish the operational standards, automation, and institutional knowledge that allow 2F to support customers more effectively as our platform and customer base continue to grow.

Note: This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a DoD Top Secret security clearance. Candidates holding an active or interim DoD TS eligible clearance (or higher) are strongly preferred. Due to the strict federal security requirements for this role, U.S. citizenship is required.

Additionally, candidates must reside in one of our approved hiring hubs:

• DC/Maryland/Virginia

• Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC

• Denver/Colorado Springs, CO

• Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

What You’ll Do:

• Lead resolution of the Customer Support team's most technically complex incidents and escalations, driving cross-functional investigations across customer architectures, platform capabilities, cloud infrastructure, and application design.

• Serve as the primary technical escalation point within Customer Support, triaging complex issues, guiding Enterprise Customer Operations Engineers through difficult troubleshooting, and ensuring critical situations are resolved with urgency and technical depth.

• Develop and maintain technical runbooks, support playbooks, automation, and knowledge base resources that improve resolution speed, consistency, and team capability.

• Participate in on-call rotation and serve as the senior technical resource during high-severity incidents, coordinating response across internal teams and communicating clearly with affected customers.

• Identify recurring operational issues and partner with Platform Engineering and Product to address root causes, reduce support burden, and improve platform reliability at scale.

• Partner with customer engineering teams to provide expert-level troubleshooting guidance, architectural context, and operational recommendations that improve long-term customer health.

• Navigate government change control processes, ATO-bounded environments, and classification-level constraints on behalf of customers and in coordination with internal teams.

• Mentor Enterprise Customer Operations Engineers through technical coaching, case reviews, and knowledge sharing that builds team capability and a culture of operational excellence.

• Collaborate with Implementation Engineering on complex onboarding transitions to ensure operational risks are identified and addressed before customers move to production.

Skills You’ll Bring to Our Team:

• 5–8+ years of experience in technical support engineering, DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Cloud Infrastructure, or a related technical discipline, with a demonstrated history of leading complex customer-facing support engagements.

• Deep experience deploying and operating cloud-native applications on Kubernetes, with strong expertise in containerization, Helm, container hardening, service networking, and modern application architectures.

• Strong expertise across one or more major cloud providers (AWS GovCloud, Azure Government, or GCP), with experience supporting and troubleshooting secure cloud-native applications in enterprise or government environments.

• Demonstrated ability to investigate and resolve complex technical issues spanning infrastructure, networking, Kubernetes, cloud services, security, and application architecture.

• Proficiency in container hardening, image security, and CVE remediation in compliance with DoD and government security standards.

• Familiarity with secure software delivery practices and experience working within highly regulated or compliance-driven environments (e.g., FedRAMP High, NIST 800-53, DISA Cloud Computing SRG, DoD IL4/IL5/IL6).

• Experience with support and incident management tooling such as GitLab, PagerDuty, Jira, and GitOps-based incident workflows.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to lead technical support engagements, communicate effectively under pressure, and build trusted partnerships with customer engineering teams and internal stakeholders.

• A systems-thinking mindset with a passion for mentoring engineers, improving support operations, and building scalable solutions that reduce recurring issues and toil across the customer base.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in a fast-paced startup or high-growth defense technology environment.

• Experience serving as a technical escalation point or senior SME for complex customer support or production operations engagements in government or DoD environments.

• Direct experience supporting DoD, IC, or federal civilian customers in a SaaS/PaaS context, ideally at classified or high-baseline authorization levels.

• Familiarity with Zero Trust architecture principles and their application in government cloud environments.

• Familiarity with ATO processes, government change management, and the operational constraints unique to classified or ATO-bounded environments.

• Experience developing support playbooks, runbooks, escalation frameworks, or knowledge management systems that improve team-wide support capability.

• Experience with modern observability platforms and monitoring technologies (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, Mimir).

• Experience building or contributing to internal tooling, automation, or operational capabilities that reduce support toil.

• Familiarity with technologies in our ecosystem, including Kubernetes, Docker, Helm, Istio, Terraform, relational databases, and Git-based development workflows.

  The base salary for this position will fall between 140,000-190,000 Your ultimate compensation will be determined by professional background, technical proficiency, seniority, and regional cost factors. Furthermore, this opportunity includes potential eligibility for equity awards and discretionary bonuses, rounding out a comprehensive total rewards offering.

Success at 2F Looks Like:

• Viewing obstacles as opportunities for growth

• Having a bias toward action and tangible, measurable results

• Striving to be both compassionate and direct with your feedback

• Being team-oriented and inclusive with your action

Perks & Benefits:

This role is a full time position. As a public benefit corporation, we’re a team of purpose-driven trailblazers transforming the future of U.S. national security. We hire the best to do their best and, as such, we are committed to providing the perks and benefits you need to be successful—both in- and outside the workplace.

We offer you:

• Competitive Salary

• 100% Healthcare, vision and dental coverage

• 401(k) + 3% company contribution

• Additional benefit perks (One Medical membership, mental health resources and family planning assistance)

• Equity incentive plan

• Tech + office supplies stipend

• Annual professional development stipend

• Flexible paid time off + federal holidays off

• Parental leave

• Work virtually, near one of our hub locations

• Referral Bonus

Visit our careers page to learn more.

Who We Are:

At Second Front Systems (2F), we empower defense and national security professionals to stay ahead in the ongoing race to leverage emerging technologies effectively and securely. Founded by three former U.S. Marines with firsthand experience of the dangers outdated technology poses in combat, our team is dedicated to fast-tracking government access to disruptive, commercially-proven technology for U.S. national security missions.

Our Game Warden product, a fully managed and compliant DevSecOps platform, accelerates the process for accrediting software as a service (SaaS) applications for government use.

Learn how 2F can help you make an impact on national security missions at www.secondfront.com

One last thing:

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Are you ready to join our team:

To apply, click the “Apply for This Job” button at the top or bottom of this page and complete the application form. This position will remain open until filled, and applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

State notices:

Colorado:

In accordance with Colorado law, applicants may redact their date of birth, dates of attendance, and dates of graduation from any uploaded documents.

Maryland:

Under Maryland law, an employer may not require or demand, as a condition of employment, prospective employment, or continued employment, that an individual submit to or take a polygraph examination or similar test. An employer who violates this law is guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to a fine not exceeding $100.

Compensation Range: $140K - $190K