SAP NS2 DevOps Engineering Manager (Herndon, VA preferred)

We help the world run better
At SAP, we keep it simple: you bring your best to us, and we'll bring out the best in you. We're builders touching over 20 industries and 80% of global commerce, and we need your unique talents to help shape what's next. The work is challenging – but it matters. You'll find a place where you can be yourself, prioritize your wellbeing, and truly belong. What's in it for you? Constant learning, skill growth, great benefits, and a team that wants you to grow and succeed.

SAP NS2 DevOps Engineering Manager - Herndon VA (preferred)

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

SAP is the global market leader for business software and related services, and SAP National Security Services Inc.® (SAP NS2®) is an independent U.S. subsidiary, offering SAP solutions with specialized levels of security and support to meet the requirements of U.S. national security and critical infrastructure customers. 

This position requires access to customer data; Must be a U.S. citizen. SAP NS2 does not offer Visa sponsorships for this role

All internals must have Manager’s approval to transfer.

Job Description

Our Infrastructure Build and Operations organization is responsible for building and operating secure, reliable environments for our customers. We are an automation-first organization: our teams use Terraform and Ansible to provision, configure, and manage customer environments across multiple clouds.

We are looking for a DevOps Engineering Manager to lead the team that builds and evolves the “control plane” for Infrastructure Build and Operations - owning how we orchestrate, standardize, and automate the execution of our build process at scale. This role focuses on automating how we build and operate customer as well as day‑2 operations (changes, patching, scaling, and lifecycle management). The ideal candidate combines deep infrastructure‑as‑code expertise with strong people leadership and a product mindset toward internal platforms and tooling.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead and develop a high-performing engineering team within Infrastructure Build and Operations focused on building and operating automation (platforms, pipelines, and tooling that execute Terraform and Ansible at scale).

• Own the end-to-end strategy for how Infrastructure Build and Operations automates both building and operating customer environments, including workflow orchestration, pipeline design, and integration with ticketing, approvals, observability, and run operations.

• Design and oversee implementation of standardized patterns, modules, and frameworks for automated execution of Terraform and Ansible, enabling other build/operations teams to deliver consistent, secure environment builds and routine operations.

• Collaborate closely with environment build teams, operations teams, security, and product stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into control-plane capabilities, reusable automation, and self-service workflows for provisioning and ongoing operations.

• Build and operate robust automation pipelines that orchestrate Terraform and Ansible runs for both initial provisioning and operational changes, including plan/apply workflows, approvals, rollbacks, drift detection, and change reporting.

• Promote and guide adoption of generative AI and other automation tooling to streamline environment builds, incident response, troubleshooting, and routine operational tasks, improving quality and reducing manual effort.

• Oversee implementation and continuous improvement of monitoring, logging, and audit capabilities for Terraform and Ansible executions, providing full traceability of who changed what, where, and when across customer environments.

• Establish and enforce standards for documentation, runbooks, and onboarding materials so that other Infrastructure Build and Operations teams can effectively and safely consume the control-plane services for both build and operations use cases.

• Partner with leadership to communicate status, risks, and outcomes for major automation and operations-improvement initiatives, ensuring alignment across Infrastructure Build and Operations and adjacent teams.

KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS

• Demonstrated leadership and stakeholder management skills; able to collaborate, influence, and drive adoption of common platforms and standards across multiple teams.

• Experience with Terraform and Ansible

• Proficiency in Python and shell scripting (e.g., Bash) for building automation tooling, pipeline integrations, and utility services around Terraform and Ansible.

• Background in Linux OS deployment, configuration, troubleshooting, and performance tuning in production environments.

• Solid understanding of SDLC and modern DevOps practices, including Git workflows, CI/CD, trunk-based development, automated testing for infrastructure-as-code, and release management of operational changes.

• Strong knowledge of foundational services in at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and the ability to reason about multi-cloud patterns and controls for environment automation and operations.

• Strong investigation and debugging skills for failures, Terraform/Ansible execution issues, and cross-environment configuration problems impacting both provisioning and day‑2 operations.

• Experience with centralized logging, metrics, and observability for automation platforms, IaC executions, and operational events in customer environments.

• Working knowledge of networking (IP routing, subnetting, DNS, load balancing) sufficient to guide teams building network-related IaC and troubleshoot environment issues

• Experience with ticket management (e.g., ServiceNow), including integrating automation workflows with change, incident, problem, and request processes.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
  10+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure, automation, or DevOps roles, with significant hands-on work in Terraform and Ansible.

• 3+ years of experience leading engineering teams (people management or formal tech lead) in DevOps, SRE, platform, or infrastructure-focused organizations.

• 5+ years of Terraform experience, including designing and operating production-grade IaC for complex, multi-environment or multi-tenant use cases.

• 5+ years of Ansible experience, including building reusable roles/collections and integrating Ansible with CI/CD pipelines and operational workflows.

• Demonstrated experience designing and delivering automation platforms, pipelines, or frameworks consumed by multiple teams for both provisioning and ongoing operations.

• Strong understanding of core networking: TCP/IP, DNS, routing, and cloud connectivity.

• Candidates based within commuting distance to the Herndon, VA office are strongly preferred. In office expecectations for local candidates are 2-3 times a week.
• Must be able to travel quarterly for team meetings.

Preferred qualifications

• Hands-on experience architecting or operating internal control planes / platform services that orchestrate Terraform, Ansible, or similar IaC tools for both build and operations.

• Hands-on experience with AI/ML tooling or leveraging generative AI to improve engineering workflows, operational runbooks, and automation quality.

• Experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems or shared platform services in cloud or hybrid environments.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with a track record of producing clear technical documentation, design proposals, and executive-ready status updates.

Bring out your best
SAP innovations help more than four hundred thousand customers worldwide work together more efficiently and use business insight more effectively. Originally known for leadership in enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, SAP has evolved to become a market leader in end-to-end business application software and related services for database, analytics, intelligent technologies, and experience management. As a cloud company with two hundred million users and more than one hundred thousand employees worldwide, we are purpose-driven and future-focused, with a highly collaborative team ethic and commitment to personal development. Whether connecting global industries, people, or platforms, we help ensure every challenge gets the solution it deserves. At SAP, you can bring out your best.

We win with inclusion
SAP’s culture of inclusion, focus on health and well-being, and flexible working models help ensure that everyone – regardless of background – feels included and can run at their best. At SAP, we believe we are made stronger by the unique capabilities and qualities that each person brings to our company, and we invest in our employees to inspire confidence and help everyone realize their full potential. We ultimately believe in unleashing all talent and creating a better world.

SAP is committed to the values of Equal Employment Opportunity and provides accessibility accommodations to applicants with physical and/or mental disabilities. If you are interested in applying for employment with SAP and are in need of accommodation or special assistance to navigate our website or to complete your application, please send an e-mail with your request to Recruiting Operations Team: [email protected].

For SAP employees: Only permanent roles are eligible for the SAP Employee Referral Program , according to the eligibility rules set in the SAP Referral Policy. Specific conditions may apply for roles in Vocational Training.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their age, race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, age, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, et al), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, protected veteran status, or disability.

Compensation Range Transparency : SAP believes the value of pay transparency contributes towards an honest and supportive culture and is a significant step toward demonstrating SAP’s commitment to pay equity. SAP provides the annualized compensation range inclusive of base salary and variable incentive target for the career level applicable to the posted role. The targeted annual combined range for this position is 176300-374200USD . The actual amount to be offered to the successful candidate will be within that range, dependent upon the key aspects of each case which may include education, skills, experience, scope of the role, location, etc. as determined through the selection process. Any SAP variable incentive includes a targeted dollar amount and any actual payout amount is dependent on company and personal performance. Please reference this link for a summary of SAP benefits and eligibility requirements:

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Requisition ID: 452568 | Work Area: Software-Development Operations | Expected Travel: 0 - 20% | Career Status: Management | Employment Type: Regular Full Time | Additional Locations: #LI-Hybrid