USDA PHIS DevSecOps Engineer

Visual Connections, based in Columbia, Maryland, has an exciting opportunity for a Dev Sec Ops  Engineer to join our team in a 100% remote role supporting the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) modernization of the Administrative Enforcement Report (AER) capability within the Public Health Information System (PHIS). This hands‑on role is responsible for building secure, repeatable, and auditable software delivery capabilities for a mission‑critical Azure Government solution.

You will design and operate CI/CD pipelines, automate environment configuration and deployments, integrate security and compliance controls into the software lifecycle, and support releases and issue resolution across development, test, user acceptance, and production environments. You will work closely with developers, architects, database and data specialists, testers, security personnel, operations staff, and PHIS subject matter experts to deliver reliable releases while protecting sensitive Government data and preserving complete traceability.

• Design, implement, and maintain Azure Dev Ops build and release pipelines for C# and Microsoft ASP.NET Core 8 applications, web assets, APIs, database changes, automated tests, and approved Azure services.
• Automate build, test, package, configuration, deployment, verification, and rollback activities across development, test, user acceptance, staging, and production environments.
• Establish Git repository, branching, pull‑request, code‑review, versioning, release‑tagging, and artifact‑retention practices that provide end‑to‑end traceability from approved backlog item to deployed release.
• Implement gated promotion workflows with required approvals, separation of duties, change records, release‑readiness evidence, controlled access, and recoverable rollback procedures.
• Integrate static application security testing, software composition analysis, secrets detection, dependency and license checks, infrastructure‑as‑code scanning, dynamic testing where appropriate, and other approved security controls into CI/CD pipelines.
• Establish secure software supply‑chain practices, including trusted build agents, protected branches, artifact integrity, dependency governance, vulnerability tracking, and software bill of materials generation when required.
• Manage application settings, secrets, certificates, connection information, and environment‑specific configuration using Azure Key Vault, Azure App Configuration, approved variable controls, and least‑privilege access patterns.
• Automate and support configuration of approved PHIS platform components, including Azure Functions, Storage Accounts, Azure Service Bus, Azure API Management, Azure SQL Managed Instance, Azure Data Factory, and applicable application hosting services.
• Use infrastructure‑as‑code and configuration‑as‑code practices to make approved environment changes repeatable, reviewable, version‑controlled, and consistent across environments.
• Coordinate with security and identity teams to implement role‑based access control, service identities, USDA eAuthentication, PIV/Linc Pass access, credential rotation, privileged‑access controls, and environment access reviews.
• Implement centralized application, API, database, messaging, deployment, and security logging; develop operational dashboards and alerts that support rapid detection, diagnosis, escalation, and audit review.
• Ensure logs and deployment records capture the actor, action, timestamp, environment, release version, approval, outcome, and relevant correlation identifiers without exposing sensitive data or secrets.
• Embed unit, API, integration, Playwright end‑to‑end, regression, accessibility, security, and performance tests into delivery pipelines…