Azure Platform Lead Engineer

Work Where it Matters

Five Rivers Analytics (FRA), an Akima company, is not just another federal IT contractor. As an Alaska Native Corporation (ANC), our mission and purpose extend beyond our exciting federal projects as we support our shareholder communities in Alaska.

At FRA, the work you do every day makes a difference in the lives of our 15,000 Iñupiat shareholders, a group of Alaska natives from one of the most remote and harshest environments in the United States.

For our shareholders, FRA provides support and employment opportunities and contributes to the survival of a culture that has thrived above the Arctic Circle for more than 10,000 years.

For our government customers, FRA delivers streamline operations in support of an increasingly fast-paced, complex, and dynamic digital environment.

As a FRA employee, you will be surrounded by a challenging, yet supportive work environment that is committed to innovation and diversity, two of our most important values. You will also have access to our comprehensive benefits and competitive pay in addition to growth opportunities and excellent retirement options.

The Azure Platform Lead oversees and coordinates engineering work across the USMC Enterprise Azure DevSecOps environment. This role leads a small team including a platform engineer, Azure Kubernetes engineer, Azure DevOps/GitHub engineer, and Azure identity engineer. The Azure Platform Lead ensures the platform is stable, secure, modern, and aligned with mission requirements. Responsibilities include technical direction, operational oversight, capability development, and cross-team coordination.

The qualified candidate must be located in either Charleston, SC or Stafford, VA for periodic visits to the customer site/location. 

• Team Leadership & Coordination:
  • Guide, support, and coordinate tasks across Azure engineering team members.
  • Ensure consistent engineering standards, quality, and delivery of platform capabilities.
  • Work closely with other Azure teams, security groups, and stakeholders to maintain platform alignment.
• Architecture & Platform Engineering:
  • Support architectural decisions for Azure services, DevSecOps pipelines, and cloud-native components.
  • Oversee development and maintenance of IaC modules, Helm charts, Kubernetes resources, and automation workflows.
  • Lead platform modernization, upgrades, and improvement efforts.
• Operational Stability & Reliability:
  • Ensure availability, resiliency, and performance of Azure services and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Oversee daily operations across VMs, storage, networking, Key Vault, ACR, and container workloads.
  • Support incident response, troubleshooting, and continuous operational improvement.
• DevSecOps & Automation:
  • Direct secure CI/CD practices across Azure DevOps and GitHub.
  • Promote consistent use of Terraform, Bicep, Ansible, and cloud automation.
  • Oversee integration of security scanning, container hardening, and compliance automation.
• Security & Compliance:
  • Maintain RMF-aligned compliance and security posture across Azure and DevSecOps tools.
  • Lead review of alerts, logs, and analytics to identify and resolve resource or subscription issues.
  • Support Zero Trust-aligned controls and platform security enhancements.
• Customer Onboarding & Stakeholder Engagement:
  • Manage customer onboarding, RBAC, provisioning, configuration, and documentation.
  • Coordinate helpdesk support, root cause analysis, and post-incident actions.
  • Participate in Agile/SAFe ceremonies and cross-team planning.
• Documentation & Roadmap Support:
  • Produce platform documentation, diagrams, onboarding guides, and compliance artifacts.
  • Contribute to platform roadmap activities, engineering summaries, and capability planning.

• Active Secret clearance with ability to obtain Top Secret.
• Bachelor’s degree in CS, IT, Engineering, Math, or related field, or equivalent experience in lieu of degree.
• Security+ (IAT II) or equivalent DoD 8570 certification.
• 5+ years of experience with Azure engineering, DevSecOps, CI/CD, and platform operations.
• Additional years of experience may be considered in lieu of degree. 
• Experience guiding technical work or coordinating engineering teams.
• Strong proficiency with Azure services, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud automation.
• Skilled in Linux/Windows administration and scripting (PowerShell, Azure CLI).
• Hands-on experience with Terraform, Bicep, Ansible, and automated security tools.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with DoD cloud environments or USMC enterprise systems.
• Familiarity with GitOps, Helm charts, Kubernetes operators, and advanced container technologies.
• Knowledge of Zero Trust concepts, container security, and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Splunk).
• Azure certifications (Admin, Developer, Architect), CKAD/KCNA, or DevOps-related certifications.
• Experience working in Agile/SAFe environments.