Senior CI/CD Engineer

About Vantage Point Consulting Inc.

Vantage Point Consulting is a mission-driven, woman- and veteran-owned small business. For almost two decades, we have operated at the intersection of higher education, workforce development, and public service, delivering innovative solutions that empower individuals, teams, and entire organizations. We believe in the power of growth, authentic relationships, and bringing heart and precision to every engagement. Just as we take care of our clients, we take care of our people. If you are looking for your next chapter, where your leadership skills and commitment to excellence will be recognized and put to meaningful use, you will find a home at Vantage Point.

Senior CI/CD Engineer

Location: Onsite, College Park, MD

Vantage Point Consulting is seeking a highly experienced Senior CI/CD Engineer contractor to lead the design, implementation, and optimization of enterprise-grade Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) platforms. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience with DevOps practices, cloud technologies, container platforms, infrastructure automation, and application deployment pipelines.

Task Description

• Architecture & Automation
• Pipeline Orchestration: Deep proficiency in building and maintaining highly automated pipelines using tools like GitLab CI/CD
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Advanced capabilities in provisioning infrastructure securely and idempotently via tools such as Ansible.
• Environment Management: Designing deployment strategies like blue/green deployments, canary releases, and traffic shaping to eliminate downtime.
• Platform & Tooling Expertise
• Containerization & Orchestration: Advanced management of Docker and Kubernetes clusters (or Red Hat OpenShift), including admission control and image policies.
• GitOps & State Reconciliation: Utilizing tools like Argo CD or Flux to ensure environments perfectly match repository declarations.
• Scripting Languages: Strong proficiency in Bash, Python, or PowerShell for building custom automation and integrations.
• Security & Governance
• Policy-as-Code: Enforcing compliance frameworks and CIS benchmarks automatically before merges or deployments
• Secret Management: Implementing centralized, audit-ready secrets and credential management
• Vulnerability Scanning: Integrating Static and Dynamic Application Security Testing (SAST/DAST) and container vulnerability scanning natively into the deployment lifecycle.
• Operations & Experience
• Post-Deployment Telemetry: Configuring continuous, automated monitoring and alerting (e.g., Prometheus, Datadog) to verify application health and quickly execute automated rollbacks
  
  

Required Qualifications

Required Skills/Level of Experience :

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 7 years of DevOps, Platform Engineering, or CI/CD experience.
• 5 years of experience designing enterprise CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong scripting skills in Python, Bash, PowerShell, or Groovy.
• Deep understanding of:
• Git-based workflows
• CI/CD principles
• Container technologies
• Kubernetes/OpenShift
• Cloud platforms
  
  

Required Technical Skills

CI/CD Tools

• GitLab CI/CD
• GitHub Actions
  
  

Source Control

• Git
  
  

Containers & Orchestration

• Docker
• Kubernetes
• Red Hat OpenShift
  
  

Infrastructure Automation

• Terraform
• Ansible
  
  

Monitoring

• Prometheus
• Grafana
• Splunk
  
  

Engagement Type & Rate

• This role is offered as an independent contractor engagement, structured as either 1099 or corp-to-corp (C2C) at the contractor's election.
• Rate: $95 to $120/hr, commensurate with experience and engagement structure.
• This is an onsite position based in College Park, MD.
  
  

Work Authorization

Due to federal contract requirements governing this engagement, the contractor must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident alien. H-1B visa holders cannot be accommodated for this role.