Cloud Engineer

Title: AWS Cloud Platform Engineer Location: Hybrid in Reston, VA Terms of Employment: • W2 Contract, 6 Months Potential Extension • This is a hybrid position with a strong preference for candidates local to the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) area, as they must be able to come on-site at least once a week, preferably on Wednesdays. • Office is located in Reston, VA. Overview & Key Responsibilities We are seeking a dynamic and experienced AWS Cloud Platform Engineer to provide hands-on technical expertise and leadership for our client’s AWS cloud footprint. You will play a pivotal role in a major cloud migration initiative, focused on moving applications from on-premise to a modern AWS ecosystem. This is not an administrative role, but a hands-on position where you will support the entire lifecycle of services from inception and design to deployment and operations. The ideal candidate has a strong background in AWS platform engineering, automation, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles. Key responsibilities include: • Provide hands-on technical expertise for supporting our AWS footprint, including security and guardrails. • Design, implement, and integrate our cloud platform resources on Amazon Web Services (AWS). • Engage in and improve the end-to-end lifecycle of services, starting from inception & design, deployment, and operations. • Drive and support cloud transformation and migration efforts, including providing consultation on infrastructure planning and engineering. • Establish automation capabilities leveraging Cloud native solutions and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform, Ansible, and Python. Our goal is to provision infrastructure with code and policy as code. • Support activities including system design consulting, capacity planning, and launch reviews. • Willingly troubleshoot difficult issues and provide consultation to internal development and architecture teams. • Promote and ensure modern application design, apply engineering best practices, and mitigate vulnerabilities. • Monitor and manage the stability, availability, and performance of enterprise systems and platforms across IT domains. • Actively participate in and help guide customers on using Cloud-native design and architecture patterns, leveraging components like containers, microservices, and serverless computing. • Automate end-to-end processes to maintain (patches and upgrades) our AWS Cloud ecosystem. • Make data-driven recommendations and mentor peers. • Engage with various teams, including security, architecture, and project management. Required Skills & Experience: • Minimum of 10 years of overall IT experience, with at least 5-10 years focused on AWS Cloud Platform engineering and administration. • Strong hands-on knowledge and current implementation experience with a wide range of AWS services, including but not limited to VPC, Networking, EC2, S3, IAM, ELBs, Lambda, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and EKS. • Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, Ansible playbooks, and Python code. Experience with AWS CloudFormation is also required. • Minimum of 3 years of experience with containerization (Kubernetes) and DevOps toolchains (e.g., Jenkins, Bitbucket, Artifactory). • 3-5 years of experience in a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) role. • Experience with an end-to-end software engineering lifecycle (Build, Integration, Test, Releasing, and Deployment). • Solid understanding of cloud architecture principles, design patterns, and best practices for building scalable, resilient, and secure cloud environments. • Hands-on experience with writing Lambda functions, preferably in Python (Boto3). • A great understanding of various DevOps toolchains, including Git/repo, Crucible, and Jenkins. • Strong verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to effectively interact with both technical and non-technical stakeholders. • A bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, or a related field.