Senior Specialist, Security Research Engineer

Location: Washington D.C., DC, US

Employment Type: Full-Time

L3Harris is dedicated to recruiting and developing high-performing talent who are passionate about what they do. Our employees are unified in a shared dedication to our customers’ mission and quest for professional growth. L3Harris provides an inclusive, engaging environment designed to empower employees and promote work-life success. Fundamental to our culture is an unwavering focus on values, dedication to our communities, and commitment to excellence in everything we do.

L3Harris is the Trusted Disruptor in defense tech. With customers’ mission-critical needs always in mind, our employees deliver end-to-end technology solutions connecting the space, air, land, sea and cyber domains in the interest of national security.

Job Title: Senior Specialist, Security Research/ DevOps Engineer
Job Code: 39002
Job Location: Washington DC
Job Schedule: 5/8: Employees work 8 hours per day, 5 days per week

Job Description:

We are looking for a DevOps Engineer to help design, automate, secure, and maintain the infrastructure that underpins our next-generation software platforms and customer environments.

You will work closely with software engineers, system leads, and platform architects to build scalable CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure, observability tooling, deployment automation, and secure on-premises environments across multiple projects.

This role suits someone who is equally comfortable debugging production issues, writing infrastructure-as-code, improving developer workflows, and operating within high-security or air-gapped environments where reliability, traceability, and operational discipline are critical.

Essential Functions:

• Design and maintain secure, scalable cloud and on-premises infrastructure environments.
• Build and improve CI/CD pipelines for mobile, backend, and platform services.
• Develop deployment workflows suitable for disconnected, restricted, or air-gapped environments.
• Automate provisioning and operational workflows using Infrastructure-as-Code.
• Manage container orchestration platforms and deployment tooling.
• Improve system observability through logging, monitoring, tracing, and alerting.
• Support infrastructure and platform operations within high-security environments.
• Work with engineering teams to improve reliability, deployment velocity, and operational resilience and support security hardening, vulnerability remediation, patching, and compliance requirements.
• Troubleshoot infrastructure and deployment issues across development, staging, production, and customer-representative environments.
• Participate in technical planning, platform evolution, and operational readiness activities and document infrastructure standards, operational procedures, disaster recovery processes, and security controls.
• Ability to obtain and maintain security clearance.
  
  
  

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree with a minimum 6 years prior relevant experience. Graduate Degree with a minimum of 4 years of prior related experience. In lieu of a degree, minimum of 10 years of prior related experience.
  
  
  

Preferred Additional Skills:

• Strong experience with Linux systems administration and automation.
• Experience supporting on-premises infrastructure and customer-representative environments and experience operating in restricted, classified, or air-gapped environments.
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as Terraform and Ansible.
• Experience with container technologies including Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitLab CI or similar and strong scripting skills in Bash, Python, or Go.
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, or ELK
• Understanding of networking, security principles, identity management, and zero-trust environments.
• Familiarity with secure artifact management and offline deployment workflows.
• Ability to work effectively in cross-functional engineering teams and strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science (or related field) and 4 years of experience or Master's. In lieu of a degree, 8 years of experience in cyber security and software engineering

• Experience supporting regulated or mission-critical environments.
• Experience with mobile application delivery pipelines.
• Experience with secure software supply chain practices.
• Familiarity with GitOps workflows and platform engineering concepts.
• Experience working in government or defense-adjacent environments.

In compliance with pay transparency requirements, the salary range for this role in Washington DC is $111,500 - $207,500. This is not a guarantee of compensation or salary, as final offer amount may vary based on factors including but not limited to experience and geographic location. L3Harris also offers a variety of benefits, including health and disability insurance, 401(k) match, flexible spending accounts, EAP, education assistance, parental leave, paid time off, and company-paid holidays. The specific programs and options available to an employee may vary depending on date of hire, schedule type, and the applicability of collective bargaining agreements. 

#LI-FS1

L3Harris Technologies is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. L3Harris is committed to treating all employees and applicants for employment with respect and dignity and maintaining a workplace that is free from unlawful discrimination. All applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, national origin, ancestry, ethnicity, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or other related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, disability, genetic information, citizenship status, characteristic or membership in any other group protected by federal, state or local laws. L3Harris maintains a drug-free workplace and performs pre-employment substance abuse testing and background checks, where permitted by law.

Please be aware many of our positions require the ability to obtain a security clearance. Security clearances may only be granted to U.S. citizens. In addition, applicants who accept a conditional offer of employment may be subject to government security investigation(s) and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.

By submitting your resume for this position, you understand and agree that L3Harris Technologies may share your resume, as well as any other related personal information or documentation you provide, with its subsidiaries and affiliated companies for the purpose of considering you for other available positions.

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