Senior AWS DevOps Engineer

Eligibility: This position is eligible for US Citizens and Green Card Holders only. Note: This is a highly technical, principal-level role requiring immediate leadership and minimal learning curve. Must be open to on-call rotation and weekend support. Role Summary We are seeking a Seasoned DevOps Engineer to lead our critical cloud migration effort as CareFirst moves its data and products to AWS. You will be responsible for designing, building, and implementing robust, end-to-end DevOps pipelines that successfully deploy applications into AWS production environments. This is a hands-on leadership position demanding deep, recent technical expertise in container orchestration, service mesh, and modern DevSecOps practices. Key Technical Requirements (Non-Negotiable) The ideal candidate must demonstrate deep, recent technical expertise in the following: EKS Expertise (3-4 Years Recent Experience - KEY): Solid, hands-on experience building and deploying services within AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) using AWS managed services. You should have strong experience with EKS service deployment and development, with some understanding of EKS cluster administration. Helm Chart Development: Proven ability to develop Helm charts from scratch for complex application deployments. Istio Service Mesh (KEY): Significant, hands-on experience with Istio for managing traffic, security, and observability within a microservices architecture. DevSecOps: Decent experience with DevSecOps practices, including understanding and explaining application security vulnerabilities. CI/CD Pipeline Tooling: Expert experience with CloudBees, BitBucket, SonarQube, and Artifactory. Scripting & Automation: Strong practical experience with Python or Shell scripting. CloudNative Practices: Hands-on expertise applying CloudNative Practices and concepts. AWS Scaling: Demonstrated experience in scaling applications and infrastructure within AWS. CI/CT/CD Concepts: Outstanding knowledge of Continuous Integration (CI), Testing (CT), Security, and Deployment (CD) concepts. Essential Functions & Responsibilities As a Principal Engineer, you will lead and execute full lifecycle activities: Cloud Architecture & Roadmap: Plan and build roadmaps for the EKS and AWS DevOps implementation efforts. Design & Implementation: Work directly with architects and other principal/lead engineers on design and implementation tasks. EKS Application Development: Build production applications leveraging EKS and AWS best practices. Automation: Relentlessly pursue the automation of manual steps and find opportunities to reduce team interdependencies. Code Quality: Conduct thorough code reviews, unit, and integration testing. System Level Support: Apply engineering principles to improve the resiliency, performance, efficiency, and scalability of the DevSecOps ecosystem. Documentation: Document system design and unit testing information (excellent documentation skills required). Rotational Support: Must be open to participating in on-call rotation and weekend support. Day-to-Day Activities Build the agreed upon application leveraging EKS, CloudNative concepts, and implement it in production. Leverage the Devops Scoring Framework to improve DevOps and Product Maturity Index numbers for delivery teams. Perform AWS and EKS operations and administration. Administer the AWS console where CloudBees Agent exists on the EC2 instance. Retrospect on current implementations and document lessons learned for future use. Required Knowledge & Experience Experience: Seasoned Principal Engineer, capable of operating with little to no supervision. System Administration: Some foundational understanding of Linux and Windows administration to assist with server stability, troubleshooting, and maintenance. Working knowledge of JIRA and Confluence. Self-starter and quick learner with accountability for meeting milestones. Job Type: Contract Pay: $60.00 - $65.00 per hour Expected hours: 40 per week Application Question(s): Are you a USC or GC? Candidates not answering this question will automatically be rejected. Describe your recent hands-on experience with AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) How proficient are you with Helm and Istio? Which CI/CD tooling platforms are you an expert in? Work Location: Remote