OPA / POLICY-AS-CODE ENGINEER | IT ARCHITECTURE

OPA / POLICY-AS-CODE ENGINEER — IT ARCHITECTURE

Location: Jersey City, NJ — Hybrid, 2–3 Days/Week

Engagement: 3–6 Month Contract-to-Hire

Compensation: Up to $100/Hour, Based on Expertise

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are seeking a highly technical, hands-on OPA / Policy-as-Code Engineer to join a lean IT Architecture team supporting a major global financial-market infrastructure organization that clears and settles trillions of dollars in financial transactions every day.

This role is part of a high-visibility Enterprise Backstage / Internal Developer Platform POC focused on building standardized Golden Paths for secure, governed, automated developer self-service.

This is a POC WITH AN ENTERPRISE DESTINATION — successful patterns are intended to support broader enterprise adoption.

THE CORE TEAM

You will join a lean, highly technical team consisting of:

• 3 Multi-Skilled Backstage Engineers

• CI/CD Engineers

• SRE / Observability Engineers

• OPA / Policy-as-Code Engineer — this position

Every engineer has meaningful ownership, visibility, and impact.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Develop production-quality OPA / Rego policies.

• Implement policy enforcement, governance guardrails, and compliance validation within provisioning workflows.

• Integrate OPA with Terraform, CI/CD/Jenkins, Backstage, Kubernetes, and OpenShift.

• Help determine how Backstage and Golden Paths should integrate with and adhere to the CENTRALIZED ENTERPRISE OPA / POLICY-AS-CODE framework.

• Translate governance, security, and compliance requirements into executable policies.

• Support cloud governance, IAM, security guardrails, tagging standards, and policy-driven infrastructure automation.

• Identify technical and architectural gaps, recommend solutions, and help implement them.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• Strong production-level Open Policy Agent (OPA) experience

• Strong Rego development experience

• Policy-as-Code within CI/CD pipelines

• OPA + Terraform integration experience

• Kubernetes / OpenShift

• Jenkins / CI/CD

• Cloud Governance, IAM, Security, and Compliance

• Enterprise security patterns

• Ability to translate governance requirements into executable Policy-as-Code

STRONG PLUS

• Conftest and/or OPA Gatekeeper

• Backstage / Internal Developer Platform experience

• Regulated-industry experience — Financial Services, Banking, FinTech, Healthcare, or Government

• Experience translating NIST, SOC 2, or internal controls into Policy-as-Code

WHO WE WANT

Technical skills are essential, but they are NOT ENOUGH.

We are looking for someone who is:

• TECHNICALLY STRONG — deep, hands-on engineering capability

• A PROBLEM SOLVER — brings solutions, not just problems

• AN INITIATOR — does not wait for tickets or detailed instructions

• A TEAM PLAYER — collaborates effectively across a lean engineering team

• AN OWNER — takes responsibility through delivery

• AN ARCHITECTURAL THINKER — builds for enterprise scale, not just the POC

We want someone comfortable saying:

“Here are the options, here are the trade-offs, and here is what I recommend — and I can help build it.”

WHY THIS OPPORTUNITY

This is a lean, high-visibility IT Architecture team where every engineer matters.

Our guiding principle is:

MAKE THE COMPLIANT PATH THE EASIEST PATH FOR THE DEVELOPER.

Exceptional performers may be considered for full-time conversion, potentially around the Associate Director level, based on performance, demonstrated value, business need, and leadership approval.

HIRING PROCESS

Technical & Behavioral evaluation → Leadership discussion → Final selection/onboarding.