Infrastructure Engineer (DC / NY / SF / Remote)

Nava, Remote

See jobs at Nava

Duration: Full-Time

Nava is at the forefront of reimagining how our government serves its people, and we’re looking for experienced infrastructure engineers to help drive this mission forward.

You will work on a small team, helping to improve and manage all aspects of our systems, which are deployed on AWS. We make heavy use of tools such as Docker, Packer, Terraform, and Jenkins and we continually evaluate new technologies as they become production-ready for government contexts.

You'll be responsible for pushing the limits of these critical systems, from Billion User Load Tests to achieving and maintaining sub-millisecond transaction times. By doing this, you’ll help ensure that Nava continues delivering services that millions of Americans depend on. You care deeply about working on technology that affects people’s lives, and are passionate about building and maintaining large-scale systems that are well-designed, fast, scalable, and secure.

You can work remotely, or from one of Nava’s offices in DC, SF, or NYC.

Opportunities and Challenges

You will be working within the government ecosystem, which means working, sometimes closely, with other government contractors and civil servants. Working with people outside of your company means you'll likely encounter different working styles and cultural norms. At the same time, working as part of a larger team allows us to deliver on projects of larger scale and complexity.

The government also imposes a level of bureaucracy that is typically not present in a company of our size in the private sector. We operate in a regulated environment, where checks and compliance is built into the process of building software. This can make the path to production slower and some decisions, such as tools and processes, lie outside of our control. However, beyond writing code, finding and recommending ways to improve the way government software is built is one of the highest-leverage ways we help fulfill our mission.

You will be working with legacy systems. While our work is to build new systems with up-to-date technology, we have to do that within an existing ecosystem. Our work is building functional, resilient software for production. We don't build flashy prototypes that don't work for real people. This usually means getting to know legacy systems, often with poor documentation and unreliable narrators, and trying to determine how to replicate the systems' behavior or how to integrate with these systems. This is a great opportunity for engineers who enjoy software archaeology. If you care deeply about how software systems work over time, and building systems for longevity and resilience, this work is for you.

What you’ll do

Work with fellow Infrastructure Engineers to build and maintain our production infrastructure to ensure ongoing reliability while maximizing development team efficiency
Troubleshoot and debug infrastructure, network, and operating system issues
Build and maintain operations software which automates the configuration, provisioning, deployment and monitoring of our core systems
Manage security systems, linux file system permissions and network firewalls
Perform automated deployments to create new or update existing production environments
Set up and maintain alarm systems for notifications on error conditions
Join our on-call rotation as a first line of defense during production issues

What we're looking for

Previous experience maintaining a medium or larger scale production system
Significant experience in one or more of the following areas: Cloud infrastructure, Unix/Linux, Windows, Scripting, or Security
Ability to automate procedural tasks using scripting or coding in Python, Javascript, or Ruby
A thoughtful, adaptive, and collaborative mindsetUnderstanding of networks, HTTP
Ability to use the shell to achieve practical aims. E.g. navigate the shell, SSH into machines, create SSH keys, read log files, move files, and start/stop services, search in files, change permissions
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, technical and otherwise
Ability to pick up and learn new development and operations skills

Other requirements:

Experience: Minimum of 3 years
Education: Due to contractual requirements, this role requires a Bachelor's Degree (in any discipline).
Residency: Lived in United States at least 3 years out of the last 5 years
You will be required to obtain a public trust clearance.

Remote states Nava is actively hiring in: California, DC, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, Washington.

** If you are not living in one of the states listed above, unfortunately, you will not be considered for a position at this time.

We're a small team working to radically improve our government, so everyone that joins us has a direct impact on the direction and success of Nava. We are stewards – we hold a deep responsibility towards the systems that we work with. We are a community – we value collaboration both within our teams and with the many hardworking people within government. We offer generous benefits and equity.

We care deeply about diversity and inclusion at Nava. We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Note: We participate in E-Verify. Upon hire, we will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. This role is required to work from the contiguous United States.

About Nava

We're a team of engineers, designers, and product builders that were brought in to help fix HealthCare.gov in the winter of 2013. Since then, we've been working with the government to improve the services HealthCare.gov provides. The new application process that we designed and built is now used by millions each year to sign up for health insurance, and has helped America reach its lowest uninsured rate ever. With our experience repairing complex systems at HealthCare.gov we’ve seen how building with high expectations, clear design, and scalable infrastructure can create dramatic benefits. We’ve been the firefighters – now we’re the architects. We're proud of what we've been able to do, but our work is far from done. We’ve since begun work with both the Department of Veterans Affairs and Medicare. We are focused on modernizing the VA’s appeals processing systems – Veterans currently wait, on average, five years to receive a resolution. For Medicare, we are designing and building the architecture for Medicare's historic transition towards value-based care. We’ve started Nava as a public benefit corporation to radically improve how our government serves its people. We believe that the services our government provides should be clear and reliable. We’re here for the people that have no seat at the table — design for them, make decisions for them. We are their advocate and an active and responsible steward of that power.