---
title: 'Sr. Principal Mission Engineer at Clarity Innovations'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/sr-principal-mission-engineer-clarity-innovations-columbia-3x4t4ap3hwx6'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-16'
---

# Sr. Principal Mission Engineer at Clarity Innovations

- **Company:** Clarity Innovations
- **Location:** Columbia, MD
- **Posted:** 2026-07-31
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-16
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/clarityinnovates/jobs/5198134007

## Job description

Clarity Innovations is a trusted national security partner, dedicated to safeguarding our nation’s interests and delivering innovative solutions that empower the Intelligence Community (IC) and Department of Defense (DoD) to transform data into actionable intelligence, ensuring mission success in an evolving world.

Our mission-first software and data engineering platform modernizes data operations, utilizing advanced workflows, CI/CD, and secure DevSecOps practices. We focus on challenges in Information Warfare, Cyber Operations, Operational Security, and Data Structuring, enabling end-to-end solutions that drive operational impact.

We are committed to delivering cutting-edge tools and capabilities that address the most complex national security challenges, empowering our partners to stay ahead of emerging threats and ensuring the success of their critical missions. At Clarity, we are people-focused and set on being a destination employer for top talent, offering an environment where innovation thrives, careers grow, and individuals are valued. Join us as we continue to lead innovation and tackle the most pressing challenges in national security.

Senior Principal Mission Engineer (K8s & Cloud)

Position Overview

The position is for an on-site, cleared Senior Principal Mission Engineer as part of a team of software and platform engineers building a unified, multi-tenant control plane that abstracts away infrastructure differences across AWS, Azure, and on-premises environments. The platform allows application teams to provision secure, isolated Kubernetes clusters and workloads dynamically. The control plane runs Crossplane and Cluster API (CAPI).

As the primary on-site engineer, you will be dedicated to deploying, managing, updating and optimizing our platform’s environments within a classified cloud (e.g., AWS Top Secret Region). In this role, you will ensure the seamless operation of our cloud capabilities, Kubernetes clusters, and API gateway architectures.You will handle localized cloud infrastructure troubleshooting, deploy secure software updates, and provide direct technical consultation and training to the site’s mission users. You will bridge the gap between our remote engineering pipeline and the isolated, classified cloud infrastructure, handling everything from low-level troubleshooting to direct customer engagement and user training.

The ideal candidate is highly independent, capable of driving projects from inception to completion with minimal supervision.

## Key Responsibilities

- Classified Cloud Management: Manage and monitor the platform’s cloud-native services, compute instances, virtual networks (VPCs/VNets), and identity policies inside the secure cloud enclave.
- Kubernetes & Workload Integration: Troubleshoot and maintain localized Kubernetes clusters (managed or CAPI-provisioned), ensuring proper integration with ingress API gateways, Cilium network fabrics, and local container registries.
- Updates & Software Delivery: Coordinate and execute complex software and platform updates within air-gapped or restricted-connectivity cloud environments, ensuring minimal disruption to active mission sets.
- Troubleshooting & Cloud Diagnostics: Rapidly isolate and resolve cloud-specific connectivity issues, routing failures, IAM permission deadlocks, and API rate-limiting blocks.
- Customer Engagement & Technical Liaison: Serve as the on-site cloud subject matter expert, guiding the customer through complex environment configurations and managing technical expectations.
- Mission Training & Onboarding: Provide hands-on training, workshops, and documentation to site application developers onboarding their workloads onto the cloud platform.

## Qualifications

- Clearance: Active Top Secret / SCI
- Experience: 5+ years of systems engineering experience, with at least 2-3 years specifically focused on architecture and operations within government or classified cloud regions (AWS GovCloud/Secret/Top Secret or Azure Government/Secret).
- Container Orchestration: Solid understanding of Kubernetes architecture, cluster operations, and debugging cloud-native application stacks.
- Cloud Networking & Security: Practical knowledge of cloud routing, secure API gateways, security groups, IAM roles/policies, and cross-domain solution paths.
- Customer-Facing Skills: Strong verbal and written communication skills, with experience defending technical designs to government representatives and training technical end-users.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Live-Production Incident Response: Hands-on experience managing incident response lifecycles and resolving critical control-plane or etcd failures within live, high-scale production systems.
- Telemetry-Driven Debugging: Advanced capability in utilizing telemetry, API server audit logs, distributed tracing, and metrics to perform root-cause analysis and resolve complex issues in live production environments.

Salary Range: $100,000 - $330,000

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

## About Clarity Innovations

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Clarity Innovations is a mission-first software and data engineering platform that delivers secure, agile solutions to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), Intelligence Community (IC), and federal agencies.
- **Entity Type**: Private (acquired by Chameleon Consulting Group in June 2024)
- **Headquarters**: Columbia, Maryland, United States
- **Founded**: 2011
- **Founders**: Wesley Daniels (President, Strategic Initiatives)

## Core Business
- **Primary industries**: National security, defense, cybersecurity, software and data engineering
- **Target customers**: U.S. DoD, IC, federal agencies (B2G)
- **Mission**: To protect and defend our nation by deploying capabilities rapidly and maximizing mission impact; solving diverse, complex intelligence challenges; and turning data into actionable, real-time cyber intelligence.

## Products & Services
Clarity organizes its work around eight specialized **Communities of Practice** focused on three main pillars:

- **Empower Data** – Making data effective for end users and consumable by Non-Person Entities (NPEs); data engineering, analytics, and AI/ML pipelines.
- **Achieve Cyber Dominance** – Enabling cyberspace operations as a viable alternative to kinetic weapons; offensive and defensive cyber capabilities, reverse engineering, vulnerability research, and security engineering.
- **Transform Systems** – Modern solutions architecture, DevSecOps, platform engineering, software engineering, human-centered design, and agile delivery to connect users to the information they need.

Each area includes services such as software development, data engineering, platform engineering, cybersecurity, UX design, product management, and program management.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company).
- **Key Metric**:
  - **Annual Revenue**: ~$3.6M (per third-party data; likely understated for a government contractor of 382 employees).
  - **Total Funding**: $11.7M (led by Capitol Meridian Partners, December 2023).
- **Notable Investors / Partners**:
  - **Capitol Meridian Partners** (lead investor in $11.7M PE round)
  - Parent company: **Chameleon Consulting Group** (acquired Clarity in June 2024)
  - Member of the **Digital Services Coalition (DSC)**
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew **+26.7% year-over-year** (382 employees as of mid-2026).
  - 5 offices across the U.S.; presence in the UK, Germany, Canada, and India.
  - Active hiring across cybersecurity, platform engineering, data science, software engineering, and more (25+ open roles on Greenhouse as of July 2026).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Mission focus**: Clarity is deeply embedded in national security and defense, with a stated commitment to "enabling the future of warfare."
- **Badgeless culture**: Collaboration with other defense contractors and agencies based on ideas and talent, not logos.
- **Digital Services Coalition membership**: Provides strong ties to like-minded, agile digital transformation firms.
- **High employee satisfaction**: 4.7/5.0 employer rating on LinkedIn (based on 64 reviews), with top scores for work-life balance (4.8) and culture (4.7).
- **Security & compliance expertise**: Demonstrated track record with DoD, IC, and federal clients, including cyber, data, and systems transformation.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue to support the DoD, IC, and federal agencies with rapid, mission-critical software and data solutions.
- Expand capabilities in cyber dominance, data engineering, and platform modernization.
- Leverage the backing of Chameleon Consulting Group to scale and pursue larger contracts.
- Emphasize human-centered design and DevSecOps to deliver secure, user-friendly products.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as a "family as much as a team" with a focus on servant leadership, mutual respect, and innovation. High employee ratings for culture (4.7) and career development (4.3).
- **Flexibility**: Remote work options available; roles can be fully remote, hybrid, or on-site at locations like Herndon, VA; Columbia, MD; Ft. Meade, MD; and others.
- **Benefits**: Comprehensive medical, dental, vision; 401(k); generous PTO/holidays; pet insurance; DashPass; wellness programs; LinkedIn Learning accounts; continuous education support.
- **Meaningful work**: Employees directly contribute to national security and defense technology, working on challenging projects that "push the boundaries of technology."

## Sources
1. [Clarity Innovations Website - Home](https://clarityinnovates.com/)
2. [Clarity Innovations - About Us](https://clarityinnovates.com/about-us/)
3. [Clarity Innovations - Careers](https://clarityinnovates.com/careers/)
4. [Jobs at Clarity Innovations (Greenhouse)](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/clarityinnovates)
5. [Clarity Innovations LinkedIn Page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/clarityinnovations)

## Other roles at Clarity Innovations

- [Junior Data Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-data-analyst-clarity-innovations-hurlburt-field-vg97se4j10h9) — Hurlburt Field, FL
- [Junior Data Analyst](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-data-analyst-clarity-innovations-hurlburt-field-a0jnnqgpyhte) — Hurlburt Field, FL
- [Director, Facilities Management](https://feeny.ai/job/director-facilities-management-clarity-innovations-herndon-pt0qncs7qj3d) — Herndon, VA
- [Senior Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-scientist-clarity-innovations-macdill-afb-g73b4pkj3zmj) — Macdill Afb, FL
- [AI Engineer, Architect](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-engineer-architect-clarity-innovations-springfield-nh6hq9388jg4) — Springfield, VA
- [Data Integrator](https://feeny.ai/job/data-integrator-clarity-innovations-macdill-afb-kef6aajxdewt) — Macdill Afb, FL
- [Senior Content Strategist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-content-strategist-clarity-innovations-arlington-h425x2kegcxe) — Arlington, VA
- [Senior Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-scientist-clarity-innovations-macdill-afb-x78pcqmxdah2) — Macdill Afb, FL
- [Senior Data Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-data-scientist-clarity-innovations-macdill-afb-rmk9ejvykx9d) — Macdill Afb, FL
- [Program Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/program-manager-clarity-innovations-columbus-e2517hmypm5d) — Columbus, OH