Ocean Career: Saildrone Senior DevOps Engineer

Saildrone is a defense company delivering maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance products to military, homeland security, and commercial customers. Saildrone unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) are extreme-endurance platforms equipped with advanced sensors and proprietary AI to provide persistent insights above and below the sea surface. Insights that support border security, law enforcement, undersea infrastructure protection, hydrography, and naval power applications. With more than 2,000,000 nautical miles sailed and 50,000 days at sea, Saildrone USVs are trusted by governments across the planet and set the standard for cost-efficient maritime intelligence in the world's harshest environments.

We are based in Alameda, CA, with offices in Washington DC and St. Petersburg, FL, and operate missions worldwide. This is an exciting opportunity with a fast-growing team at the cutting-edge intersection of big data services, autonomy, and AI. You will be part of a high-performing, multidisciplinary team delivering data, intelligence, and firepower for strategic superiority.

The Role

We are in search of an energetic and dynamic Senior DevOps Engineer to join our team. In this role, you will be part of a talented, collaborative group at the forefront of exciting new ventures in the autonomous vehicle space. The Senior DevOps Engineer lives within the Cloud Infrastructure team and will work on scaling the Saildrone software platforms through automation, tooling, and system optimization. They will work closely with engineering teams across the company to build highly available, low latency, and efficient services. Familiarity with running production environments at scale is crucial in this role along with an in-depth understanding of Linux systems internals, CI/CD workflows, and containerization.

Required Skills

  • Proven experience working as a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer or similar role.
  • Strong proficiency in Kubernetes orchestration and containerization with Docker.
  • Strong knowledge of AWS services and managing cloud-based infrastructure at scale.
  • Hands-on experience with implementing and managing CI/CD pipelines using tools such as CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, etc.
  • Solid understanding of networking principles and protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, etc.).
  • Strong familiarity with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or Ansible.
  • Familiarity with microservices architecture and related concepts.
  • Excellent troubleshooting skills and ability to analyze complex issues spanning multiple systems.
  • Skilled at identifying unnecessary elements and streamlining processes, resulting in more efficient and manageable workflows.
  • Excellent communication skills and ability to work collaboratively in a team environment.

Desired Skills

  • AWS certifications (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer).
  • Experience with other cloud platforms (Azure, Google Cloud Platform).
  • Knowledge of logging and monitoring tools like Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, etc.
  • Experience working with agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban)


Location: This is a hybrid position working in our Alameda, CA office 3 days per week. Our waterfront office offers beautiful views of San Francisco Bay in always sunny Alameda.

Salary range: $132,500-$172,200 annually.

Learn more about this opportunity and how to apply.

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