At PMAT, we work on mission critical systems that directly support the warfighter, designing, building, and securing modern digital capabilities across cloud, data, and software environments. Our teams tackle complex, real-world challenges where delivery matters more than theory, and innovation is driven by curiosity, collaboration, and purpose.
In this role, you’ll contribute to mission-focused technology initiatives, working alongside engineers and operators to deliver resilient, forward-leaning solutions in support of national defense.
About the role: PMAT is seeking an experienced Cloud Engineer III to design, build, integrate, and sustain secure cloud infrastructure and application runtime environments supporting mission-critical systems. This role will work across cloud compute, storage, containerization, Kubernetes orchestration, networking, monitoring, and security to provide reliable and scalable platforms for operational applications. The candidate will collaborate with software, platform, network, cybersecurity, and systems engineering teams to integrate commercial, government, and proprietary software into cohesive cloud-based environments. The role requires strong cloud and Linux fundamentals, hands-on troubleshooting capabilities, and the ability to solve complex infrastructure challenges while contributing to the continued evolution of scalable, automated, and secure cloud architectures.
Responsibilities:
- Design, deploy, configure, and sustain production cloud infrastructure supporting compute, storage, networking, containerized applications, and mission-critical workloads.
- Manage cloud compute and storage resources, including EC2 instances and block, file, and object storage, to maintain system availability, data persistence, performance, reliability, and efficient resource utilization.
- Deploy, administer, troubleshoot, and optimize containerized applications and microservices across Kubernetes environments, including container runtime, workload scheduling, service discovery, networking, ingress, and application availability.
- Implement and optimize dynamic resource management and scaling strategies across cloud and Kubernetes environments using workload demand, performance requirements, operational needs, and infrastructure cost considerations.
- Collaborate with engineering teams to design and implement application orchestration and runtime environments that integrate decoupled services, commercial products, Government Off-the-Shelf (GOTS) software, and proprietary applications into cohesive application workflows.
- Implement and maintain monitoring, logging, metrics, alerting, and health telemetry across cloud infrastructure, compute resources, containers, applications, and storage to support proactive system management and rapid troubleshooting.
- Configure and maintain cloud networking infrastructure, including VPCs, subnets, security groups, route tables, NACLs, load balancers, and supporting network services required for secure application connectivity.
- Partner with cybersecurity and engineering teams to implement operating system hardening, least-privilege access, IAM controls, secure network configurations, data protection requirements, and applicable security and compliance baselines.
- Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration, deployment, maintenance, and operational tasks using Infrastructure as Code, scripting, CI/CD, and other automation technologies where appropriate.
- Provide technical guidance and troubleshooting support across cloud, Linux, Kubernetes, application, network, storage, and security environments while documenting architectures, configurations, procedures, and recommended solutions.
About Us: PMAT is an innovative small business founded with a passion for developing forward-leaning solutions from exceptional people that increase the mission's capability. We focus on designing and building impactful digital solutions that utilize modern cloud, data, and software concepts. Our passion is working on complex and progressive challenges such as edge platform computing, containerizing legacy platforms, distributed data platforms, or heterogeneous data analysis.
We recruit, retain, and foster a team motivated to pursue passions, investigate new ways of doing things, and embody an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit. We believe in being curious about every element of a problem and experiment relentlessly. We foster continuous learning in an environment that encourages positive collaboration and expands our capabilities. We tap into collective intelligence, acknowledging that the most brilliant people may not be in the room. Above all else, we believe that delivering and demonstrating is more potent than a sheet of paper. We are passionate about mission-centric design and delivering effective capabilities to and for the warfighter.
Whether you’re an experienced engineer or just beginning your career, you’ll work alongside experts who are committed to solving mission-critical problems. If you’re passionate about using your skills to make a real difference, apply today and become part of a team that’s shaping the future of defense technology!
Required Skills and Experience:
- Strong experience in cloud engineering, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, systems administration, DevOps, or related technical disciplines.
- Hands-on experience deploying, configuring, administering, troubleshooting, and sustaining cloud-based compute, storage, networking, and application infrastructure.
- Experience administering Linux-based systems and troubleshooting operating system, application, resource utilization, connectivity, and infrastructure performance issues.
- Experience deploying and supporting containerized applications using Docker, containerd, Kubernetes, or similar container and orchestration technologies.
- Understanding of Kubernetes architecture and operations, including workloads, Pods, Services, networking, ingress, resource management, scaling, and application deployment.
- Experience with cloud networking concepts, including virtual networks, subnets, routing, security groups, access controls, load balancing, and secure connectivity.
- Experience implementing or supporting monitoring, logging, metrics, alerting, and observability capabilities for infrastructure and application environments.
- Understanding of cloud security, IAM, least-privilege access, system hardening, data protection, network security, and secure configuration practices.
- Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills with the ability to diagnose complex issues spanning cloud infrastructure, Linux systems, containers, applications, storage, networking, and security.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to collaborate with software, infrastructure, platform, networking, cybersecurity, program, and operational stakeholders.
Preferred Skills and Experience:
- Hands-on experience with AWS services including EC2, EBS, EFS, S3, VPCs, subnets, Security Groups, route tables, NACLs, IAM, Auto Scaling Groups, ALB/NLB, CloudWatch, and related infrastructure services.
- Experience administering AWS EKS or self-managed Kubernetes clusters and supporting containerized microservices in production environments.
- Experience implementing Kubernetes scaling and resource management using Horizontal Pod Autoscalers, Karpenter, Cluster Autoscaler, resource requests and limits, quotas, or similar capabilities.
- Experience with monitoring and observability technologies such as Amazon CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry, or similar platforms.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code technologies such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, OpenTofu, or similar declarative provisioning tools.
- Experience integrating cloud and container deployments with CI/CD or GitOps technologies such as GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Argo CD, Flux, or similar platforms.
- Experience using Python, Bash, Go, or similar languages to automate infrastructure provisioning, administration, maintenance, monitoring, and health checks.
- Experience integrating GOTS, Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS), third-party, legacy, or proprietary software into modern cloud and containerized environments.
- Familiarity with AMI management, CIS Benchmarks, STIGs, vulnerability remediation, encryption, secrets management, and other security practices applicable to government cloud environments.
- Experience supporting distributed, hybrid cloud, or other complex application environments.
- Experience supporting government, defense, classified, or other security- and compliance-driven cloud environments.
Education and Certification Requirements:
- Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent Experience
- Current Security+ Certificate
Citizenship and Clearance Requirements:
- U.S. Citizenship required
- No dual citizenship
- TS/SCI Eligible, security clearance required
Location/Address:
- 100% On-site
- San Diego, CA
Travel & Passport: 20%, CONUS and OCONUS
Work Environment: PMAT offices as needed. In some cases, work in a government facility may be required. Travel may be required for customer engagement, team coordination, and potentially for business development.
PMAT is an equal-opportunity employer. We believe in hiring a diverse workforce and sustaining an inclusive, people-first culture. We are committed to non-discrimination on any protected basis, such as disability or veteran status, or any other basis covered under applicable law.