DEVOPS & ENGINEERING PRACTICES
DEVOPS & ENGINEERING PRACTICES
Every code change is automatically built, tested, security-scanned, and logged, so releases move from months to days without skipping a single security check, and the pipeline generates the audit evidence as a byproduct instead of as a fire drill.
Avalon designs, builds, and hardens the automated path your code travels from commit to production, the tooling, the security scan gates, the approval workflow, and the audit trail, then hands it to your team, trained to run it.
THE PROBLEM & THE APPROACH
The Challenge
Our Approach
Manual builds, emailed approvals, and quarterly "release weekends" mean finished capabilities sit undeployed for weeks or months while hard delivery dates slip.
Avalon designs, builds, and hands over a working, security-gated, evidence-generating pipeline delivered as code, with one to three pilot applications migrated end-to-end before the engagement closes.
Security scans run manually and inconsistently, assessment evidence is screenshots and emails, and change-control (CM-family) findings recur at every RMF assessment.
Avalon wires SAST, SCA, secrets detection, and container scanning into the pipeline as enforced gates with SBOM generation per build, plus a control-mapping matrix documenting which NIST SP 800-53 controls each stage supports.
Releases depend on one or two people who know the manual steps, deployments fail unpredictably, and rollback is improvised.
Avalon automates deployment with role-based approval gates and separation of duties, then trains the agency's own developers and ISSM so the capability survives Avalon's departure.
Agencies frequently own licensed pipeline tools, a Jenkins server, a GitLab instance, that nobody has the bandwidth or expertise to configure into a real pipeline.
Avalon works within what the agency has already licensed and what its security office will authorize, so nothing is ripped out and no new tooling approval blocks the start of work.
CORE CAPABILITIES
Current-state assessment and target architecture design, then a pipeline built as code in the agency's own repositories.
Enforced security scanning wired directly into the pipeline, with the audit trail generated as a byproduct of every release.
The engagement closes with the pipeline proven in production use, not just installed, and the agency's own team trained to run it.
OUR PROCESS
Current-state review, tool and authorization constraints confirmed with the ISSM, target architecture, and pilot application selected. (Weeks 1–2)
Pipeline-as-code, build and test automation, artifact management, and deployment jobs. (Weeks 3–7)
Security gates enforced, SBOM generation turned on, logging routed to the SIEM, and the control-mapping matrix completed. (Weeks 8–10)
The pilot application runs through the pipeline in production use; runbooks, training, a metrics baseline, and closeout follow. (Weeks 11–12)
WHY AVALON
5
Federal Frameworks Addressed
Compliance-Fluent Engineering, Not Just a Tooling Recommendation
A large systems integrator proposes a platform program with a leverage-staffed team and a multi-quarter runway. Avalon delivers a working, evidence-generating pipeline for a named program in about a quarter, at rates meaningfully below SI cards, with the senior engineer who scoped the work doing the work.
The standalone variant prices comfortably inside HUBZone sole-source territory, scope, sign, and start in days, including fast turnarounds at fiscal-year-end.
A control-mapping matrix written for the SSP and evidence wired for the assessor, not just the developer, a step most "scan-and-report" pipeline vendors skip.
Lower overhead means competitive fixed pricing, particularly in the Simplified Acquisition Threshold range where larger integrators are structurally disinterested.
The pipeline is the best evidence generator Avalon's Authorization & Accreditation services can inherit, many boutique firms build and leave; Avalon can carry the work forward.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
Straight answers about scope, tooling, and what a pipeline engagement will, and won't, get you.
Talk to Our Team →5
Federal Frameworks Addressed
Owning the tool isn't having the capability. The question is whether every change is built, tested, scanned, and logged automatically today. If yes, you don't need us; if not, we build on the licenses you already own, nothing is ripped out.
They can, on their timeline and rate card, usually as part of something bigger. We deliver this one thing in about a quarter at fixed price, hand it to your team, and leave. It complements rather than threatens the incumbent's scope, and it earns you small-business credit.
That's accurate at the company level, and Avalon says so plainly. What you're buying is named senior engineers with individual delivery history we'll put in front of you, plus a fixed-price, fixed-scope engagement small enough that the risk is bounded by design, exactly what a first engagement with a new small firm should look like.
We design inside what your security office has already authorized or can realistically authorize, and the ISSM is a stakeholder from week one, not week ten. No gate thresholds are finalized without their sign-off.
Compare it to a year of engineer-hours spent on manual releases and assessment-prep fire drills, plus the schedule risk on your next delivery date. If your team already has the platform-engineering bandwidth, they genuinely should build it, most program offices don't, which is why releases are still quarterly.
No. Approval gates and separation of duties are designed in; the agency chooses exactly where humans sign off. Automation removes manual toil, not oversight.
No, and we draw that boundary before anyone has to ask about it. This service generates evidence and strengthens the CM, SA, SI, RA, and AU control story your authorization package relies on. It doesn't complete the assessment or grant the ATO; that decision belongs to your Authorizing Official.
Talk to Avalon about scoping a fixed-price CI/CD pipeline stand-up for your program.