Senior Cloud Systems Engineer

Location: Washington, DC
Duration: 12 Months (Possible Extension)

Position Overview

A leading organization is seeking a Senior Cloud Systems Engineer to support a secure AWS GovCloud-based platform. This is a hands-on senior engineering role requiring expertise in cloud architecture, Infrastructure-as-Code, DevSecOps, automation, and secure operations in regulated environments.
The engineer will collaborate with cloud platform teams and application development teams to design, build, secure, and operate mission-critical cloud infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Administer and support AWS GovCloud environments for enterprise-grade applications.

• Design and maintain secure, scalable, and cost-optimized cloud architectures across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

• Build cloud infrastructure using IaC tools (CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform).

• Implement CI/CD pipelines and automated workflows (GitLab or Azure DevOps preferred).

• Architect cloud solutions involving web servers, application servers, caching, load balancers, and storage services.

• Partner with internal engineering teams to support cloud infrastructure for ongoing development initiatives.

• Support data-related cloud solutions including data lakes, ETL pipelines, analytics, and ML workloads.

• Assist in modernization and cloud migration efforts, including containerization strategies.

• Implement IAM and identity federation technologies (SAML, Okta, OAuth, OIDC).

• Apply best practices for cloud security in high-security environments aligned with FedRAMP/FISMA.

• Monitor, optimize, and manage cloud costs.

• Integrate cloud infrastructure with enterprise observability tools (e.g., Splunk).

• Troubleshoot complex issues across application, networking, infrastructure, and security layers.

• Develop documentation for architecture, standards, and operational procedures.

Required Qualifications

Experience & Background

• 10+ years of IT experience, including application development.

• 5+ years of hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS strongly preferred).

• Strong experience with SDLC methodologies: Agile, DevOps, Iterative, or Lean.

• Proven history of designing, deploying, and migrating systems in cloud environments.

• Experience modernizing or containerizing legacy systems.

Cloud & Programming Skills

• Proficiency in Python, PowerShell, or IaC tools (CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform).

• Experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD, automation, and cloud-native services.

• Strong understanding of AWS services, architectures, networking, and cloud operations.

• Knowledge of RESTful services, XML/JSON, and cloud API integration.

Security & Identity

• Knowledge of identity federation (SAML, Okta, OAuth, OIDC).

• Familiarity with cloud security best practices and regulated environments (FedRAMP/FISMA).

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, IT, Engineering, or related field.

• Hands-on experience with key AWS services such as:

  • CloudTrail, CloudWatch

  • S3

  • RDS/Aurora (PostgreSQL)

  • Lambda

  • Glue or MWAA (Airflow)

• Experience with data lake architectures, ETL pipelines, or ML workloads.

• Experience containerizing applications and deploying via Docker/Kubernetes (EKS, ECS, Fargate).

• Familiarity with AWS Well-Architected Framework.

• Experience integrating workloads with Splunk and data quality tools (Great Expectations, Glue Data Quality).

Ideal Candidate Profile

The strongest candidates will:

• Have deep hands-on AWS experience, ideally including AWS GovCloud.

• Understand how to build secure, compliant, and auditable cloud systems.

• Communicate effectively across infrastructure and application development teams.

• Think in terms of automation, IaC, and repeatable cloud patterns.

• Design with cost efficiency and maintainability in mind.

• Clearly articulate architectural decisions and technical concepts to diverse audiences.