OPA / POLICY-AS-CODE ENGINEER — IT ARCHITECTURE
Location: Jersey City, NJ — Hybrid, 2–3 Days/Week
Engagement: 3–6 Month Contract-to-Hire
Compensation:
Highly Competitive Compensation, Based on ExpertiseABOUT THE ROLEWe 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 TEAMYou 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-CodeSTRONG 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-CodeWHO WE WANTTechnical 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 POCWe 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 OPPORTUNITYThis 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.
