Senior Platform Engineer, Connectivity

Simple sense builds, deploys, and sustains the Installation Resilience Platform that enables mission operators to rapidly adapt and respond. The Platform protects critical infrastructure from cyber attack while unlocking previously siloed information to monitor, diagnose, and improve response times to incidents. Our adversaries rapidly adopt the latest technology: we help defense users respond in kind.

Simple sense is a non-traditional defense contractor and prime on the Air Force's Installation Resilience Operations Command and Control (IROC) program, which is now expanding to five additional Air Force, Space Force, and Army installations from the one prototype installation, Tyndall Air Force Base.

Our team combines over 100 years of direct mission experience solving hard problems with 50 years technical expertise deploying Dev Sec Ops , cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure, giving us a deep appreciation for our customers' mission and end users' priorities. We build for scale, architecting and prioritizing technical work for long term sustainability.

Senior Platform Engineer, Connectivity
About the Role

As the Senior Platform Engineer on the Connectivity team, you will design and build the automation, tooling, and infrastructure components that enable Simple sense to securely and efficiently onboard customer facilities into our cloud-hybrid platform services. You will lead complex work across platform engineering, Linux systems, networking, and infrastructure automation to turn operational needs into scalable workflows, reusable components, and maintainable systems.

In this role, you will own ambiguous technical problems within the Connectivity engineering domain, drive solutions from design through implementation, and help less experienced engineers deliver with quality and consistency.
What Success Looks Like

30 Days: Ramp on existing connectivity architectures, automation tooling, lab environments, and onboarding workflows; build relationships across Connectivity Operations, Platform, and adjacent engineering teams.

60 Days: Contribute code and design improvements to active automation and infrastructure workflows; identify where provisioning, configuration, and validation can be standardized and improved; and begin shaping implementation plans for a complex workflow or tooling area.

90 Days: Independently own a tooling or automation area within Connectivity; deliver production-ready improvements that increase repeatability and reduce operational friction; mentor teammates through code reviews, design reviews, and implementation guidance.
What You'll Do

• Automation and Infrastructure-as-Code: Lead the design and implementation of reusable tooling and configuration-driven workflows that automate the lifecycle management of Connectivity infrastructure.
• Linux & Network Systems: Develop and maintain automation for Linux-based systems and network appliances, including secure configuration generation, system bootstrapping, software updates, and validation routines.
• Connectivity Workflow: Translate operational onboarding and maintenance needs into scalable technical workflows that improve delivery speed, consistency, and quality across customer environments, including provisioning, secure channel establishment, validation, monitoring, and sustainment.
• Security by Design: Build automation and infrastructure patterns that align with zero-trust principles, network segmentation requirements, access controls, and critical infrastructure security expectations.
• Technical Design & Problem Solving: Break down ambiguous infrastructure and workflow problems into clear technical designs, implementation plans, and well-scoped engineering tasks.
• Engineering Standards: Produce clear design documentation, implementation guidance, and operational handoff materials. Help reinforce strong standards for code quality, testing, and maintainability within the team's Connectivity engineering work.
• Elevate the Team: Provide thoughtful code reviews, mentor junior and mid-level engineers, and help grow the team's software-driven approach to Connectivity engineering.

What You Bring

• Experience: 5+ years of experience building infrastructure, automation, or platform engineering solutions in complex environments.
• Automation Development: Strong experience building infrastructure automation and tooling using disciplined engineering practices such as Git workflows, structured configuration data, CI/CD pipelines, testing, and code reviews.
• Linux Expertise: Strong hands-on experience with Linux operating systems, system configuration, package and service management, debugging, and scripting.
• Networking Knowledge: Solid understanding of network design, segmentation, VPNs, firewalls, encryption, and secure connectivity patterns.
• Technical Leadership: Proven ability to independently solve ambiguous technical problems within a complex platform or infrastructure domain, drive solution design through implementation, communicate tradeoffs clearly, and support the growth of…