DevOps Engineer IV

Job Title: DevOps Engineer IV
Location: Chicago, IL (100% Onsite)
Employment Type: Contract

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced Senior DevOps Engineer with strong hands-on expertise in AWS Cloud Infrastructure, Terraform, Kubernetes/EKS, Datadog, and CI/CD automation to support enterprise-level cloud platforms and production environments.

The ideal candidate will have extensive experience designing, deploying, maintaining, and troubleshooting AWS infrastructure, developing reusable Terraform modules, managing containerized applications, and implementing monitoring and observability solutions.

This position requires a technically proficient, hands-on engineer who can independently resolve complex production issues, improve infrastructure reliability, automate operational processes, and collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams.

The successful candidate will play a critical role in ensuring high availability, scalability, security, and operational efficiency across enterprise cloud platforms.

Key Responsibilities

AWS Cloud Infrastructure & Production Support

• Manage, maintain, and optimize enterprise-scale AWS cloud infrastructure supporting business-critical applications.
  
• Troubleshoot complex production issues across AWS services, including EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, DocumentDB, IAM, and networking.
  
• Ensure the availability, performance, scalability, and security of AWS-hosted applications and infrastructure.
  
• Investigate production incidents, perform root-cause analysis, and implement long-term corrective solutions.
  
• Support cloud infrastructure capacity planning, upgrades, maintenance, and performance optimization.
  
• Implement AWS operational best practices for monitoring, security, reliability, and cost management.
  
• Collaborate with application development, infrastructure, and operations teams to improve production stability.
  

Terraform & Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Design, develop, implement, and maintain AWS infrastructure using Terraform.
  
• Build reusable Terraform modules and standardized infrastructure configurations.
  
• Manage Terraform state files, resource dependencies, execution plans, and module versioning.
  
• Troubleshoot infrastructure drift, configuration issues, and deployment failures.
  
• Automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration across development, testing, staging, and production environments.
  
• Integrate Terraform workflows with CI/CD pipelines for automated infrastructure deployment.
  
• Participate in infrastructure code reviews and contribute to documentation, standards, and best practices.
  
• Ensure infrastructure changes are deployed securely and consistently through controlled processes.
  

Kubernetes, EKS & Container Management

• Manage and support production Kubernetes and Amazon EKS environments.
  
• Deploy, configure, monitor, and troubleshoot containerized applications using Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS ECS/EKS.
  
• Develop and maintain Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, and deployment configurations.
  
• Support Kubernetes cluster administration, upgrades, autoscaling, and workload optimization.
  
• Troubleshoot container networking, ingress controllers, service discovery, load balancing, and IAM/RBAC integration.
  
• Investigate and resolve production incidents involving containerized applications and distributed systems.
  
• Implement container orchestration best practices to improve reliability, scalability, and deployment efficiency.
  
• Support automated application deployments using GitOps and CI/CD methodologies.
  

Monitoring, Observability & Incident Management

• Administer and maintain enterprise monitoring and application performance management (APM) solutions, particularly Datadog.
  
• Develop and optimize monitoring dashboards, alerts, log management configurations, and application performance metrics.
  
• Maintain monitoring integrations with BigPanda and Configuration Management Database (CMDB) systems.
  
• Define and implement alerting standards for production environments.
  
• Monitor application availability, system health, infrastructure performance, and latency.
  
• Develop logging and indexing strategies to improve visibility and troubleshooting capabilities.
  
• Investigate production alerts, system outages, and performance issues.
  
• Collaborate with DevOps, development, and problem management teams to resolve incidents and improve operational reliability.
  
• Create reporting dashboards to track system stability, performance, availability, and cloud infrastructure costs.
  

CI/CD, Automation & DevOps Engineering

• Design, implement, maintain, and optimize automated CI/CD pipelines.
  
• Work with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Harness, or similar deployment automation tools.
  
• Automate infrastructure provisioning, application deployments, and configuration management.
  
• Develop automation scripts using Python, Bash, TypeScript, JavaScript, or other relevant technologies.
  
• Utilize Git-based source control, branching, merging, and repository management practices.
  
• Support configuration management using Ansible and AWS CloudFormation.
  
• Improve deployment processes, reduce manual intervention, and enhance operational efficiency.
  
• Support production releases, infrastructure upgrades, and change management activities.
  

Technical Leadership & Collaboration

• Act as a senior technical resource for complex AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, and production infrastructure issues.
  
• Independently troubleshoot critical production incidents and implement sustainable solutions.
  
• Collaborate with engineering, security, infrastructure, and application development teams.
  
• Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior and mid-level engineers.
  
• Develop technical documentation, operational runbooks, troubleshooting procedures, and infrastructure standards.
  
• Recommend improvements to cloud architecture, automation, monitoring, and platform reliability.
  
• Communicate technical risks, recommendations, and solutions effectively to engineering teams and leadership.
  

Required Qualifications

Professional Experience

• 10+ years of overall Information Technology experience.
  
• 7+ years of hands-on experience in DevOps Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Platform Engineering, or Cloud Infrastructure.
  
• 5+ years of hands-on experience supporting and troubleshooting AWS production environments.
  
• 5+ years of experience designing and developing Terraform-based infrastructure.
  
• 5+ years of experience working with containerized applications and environments.
  
• 3+ years of hands-on experience managing Kubernetes or Amazon EKS in production.
  

Technical Skills - Must Have

1. AWS Cloud Infrastructure

• Extensive hands-on experience with AWS production infrastructure and cloud operations.
  
• Strong knowledge of EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, IAM, and AWS networking.
  
• Experience troubleshooting distributed cloud applications and complex infrastructure issues.
  
• Understanding of AWS serverless architecture, CloudFormation, security, monitoring, and operational best practices.
  

2. Terraform & Infrastructure Automation

• Advanced hands-on experience developing Terraform configurations and reusable modules.
  
• Strong understanding of Terraform state management, execution plans, resource dependencies, and infrastructure drift.
  
• Experience provisioning and managing AWS infrastructure directly using Terraform.
  
• Ability to troubleshoot complex Terraform deployment issues and implement infrastructure automation.
  
• Experience integrating Terraform with CI/CD workflows.
  

3. Kubernetes / EKS & Docker

• Strong experience with Kubernetes, Amazon EKS, and Docker in production environments.
  
• Hands-on knowledge of Helm, kubectl, Kubernetes manifests, and cluster administration.
  
• Experience with workload deployments, autoscaling, networking, ingress, IAM/RBAC, and troubleshooting.
  
• Ability to manage production container platforms and resolve infrastructure-related incidents.
  

4. Datadog & Observability

• Hands-on experience with Datadog for infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, and log management.
  
• Experience creating monitoring dashboards, alerts, and performance metrics.
  
• Strong understanding of production incident response, root-cause analysis, and system reliability.
  
• Knowledge of monitoring integrations and alert management practices.
  

5. CI/CD & Automation

• Experience with Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Harness, or equivalent CI/CD tools.
  
• Strong knowledge of Git, source control, and automated deployment processes.
  
• Experience with infrastructure automation, scripting, and configuration management.
  
• Familiarity with Ansible and AWS CloudFormation.
  

Additional Technical Knowledge

• Experience with TypeScript and JavaScript.
  
• Understanding of AWS Cognito, Couchbase, and DocumentDB.
  
• Familiarity with Windows Server and IIS.
  
• Experience monitoring Docker containers and Kubernetes workloads.
  
• Strong knowledge of systems administration, networking, troubleshooting, and operational support.
  
• Understanding of disaster recovery, cloud security, change management, and infrastructure cost optimization.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional.
  
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional.
  
• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator.
  
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).
  
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD).
  
• Experience with BigPanda and CMDB monitoring integrations.
  
• Experience with GitOps tools such as Argo CD or Flux.
  
• Experience supporting large-scale enterprise production applications.
  
• Strong background in incident management, observability, infrastructure automation, and cloud platform reliability.
  

Work Arrangement

This position requires 100% onsite work in Chicago, IL, with occasional travel to Houston, TX, depending on business requirements.

Pay Range: $75/Hr - $85/Hr

The specific compensation for this position will be determined by a number of factors, including the scope, complexity and location of the role as well as the cost of labor in the market; the skills, education, training, credentials and experience of the candidate; and other conditions of employment. Our full-time consultants have access to benefits including medical, dental, vision and 401K contributions as well as any other PTO, sick leave, and other benefits mandated by appliable state or localities where you reside or work.

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