OPA / POLICY-AS-CODE ENGINEER | IT ARCHITECTURE

OPA / POLICY-AS-CODE ENGINEER — IT ARCHITECTURELocation: Jersey City, NJ — Hybrid, 2–3 Days/WeekEngagement: 3–6 Month Contract-to-HireCompensation: Highly Competitive Compensation, Based on Expertise

Are you ready to apply Make sure you understand all the responsibilities and tasks associated with this role before proceeding.
ABOUT 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 positionEvery 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-Code
WHO 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. xzbcwsv
HIRING PROCESSTechnical & Behavioral evaluation → Leadership discussion → Final selection/onboarding.