SRE Lead/Architect

Role : SRE Devops Lead/ Architect

Duration : Long Term Contract

location : Chicago, IL Hybrid

Job Description:

We are seeking a high-caliber Lead SRE & Edge Architect to serve as the Sole Custodian of our Integrated Intelligence Ops Ecosystem. This role is critical for bridging the gap between physical hardware security and high-velocity, cloud-native application delivery within a Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) Connected environment.

You will lead the orchestration of hybrid workloads (VMs and Containers) and pioneer a Zero-Trust security posture at the edge. This is a ""Full-Stack Infrastructure"" role, where your responsibility begins at the physical intrusion sensor on the rack and extends to the AIOps-driven self-healing of application workloads."

Key Responsibilities:

"Section 1: Scope of Work (SOW)

Ecosystem Custodianship: Design, deploy, and maintain the bridge between physical hardware security and GDC-native application delivery.

Hybrid Orchestration: Lead the deployment of VM Runtime on GDC and Symcloud Storage, enabling the co-existence of legacy VM workloads and modern microservices.

Zero-Trust Engineering: Establish and maintain a ""Zero-Trust"" architecture using MASQUE/TLS tunnels, per-machine certificates, and hardware-level encryption.

Full-Lifecycle Ownership: Responsible for the entire stack: from monitoring Physical Intrusion Sensors in the rack to implementing AIOps for workload self-healing.

Connectivity Management: Ensure seamless and secure GDC-to-Google Cloud Platform communication while maintaining 99.99% uptime for disconnected/local-first operations."

What are the Mandatory skills and skill proficiencies required for this position?

Cloud-Native & DevOps Orchestration

Orchestration: Expert-level mastery of Kubernetes (K8s) and Docker for large-scale distributed systems.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Advanced automation using Terraform (Google Cloud Platform/GDC resources) and Ansible (Bare Metal OS configuration).

CI/CD & Packaging: Engineering complex Helm Charts and managing pipelines via GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins.

Networking: Implementing NGINX Load Balancer as a Service and integrating with the Distributed Cloud Edge Network API.

1. Observability & Intelligence Ops

The ""Gold Standard"" Stack: Hands-on implementation of Prometheus (metrics), Grafana (visualization), and OpenTelemetry (OTEL) for distributed tracing.

AIOps & Self-Healing: Proven ability to build closed-loop remediation using Vertex AI to analyze OTEL traces and trigger automated Google Cloud CLI/API scripts.

III. Storage & Virtualization

Storage Architecture: Designing software-defined storage using Symcloud Storage and local persistent volumes.

VM Runtime: Deep experience orchestrating legacy VMs alongside containers within a single GDC control plane.

Section 3: Mandatory Security & Hardware Integrity

Hardware Defense: Knowledge of Physical Intrusion Sensors, Port Lockdown strategies, and Platform Certificates.

Root of Trust: Managing Trusted Platform Module (TPM) integrations and LUKS for data-at-rest protection.

Encryption: Implementation of Self-Encrypting Disks (SED) and Cloud KMS for Customer Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK).

Secure Tunnels: Engineering MASQUE tunnels or TLS-wrapped connections using per-machine certificates.

Section 4: Compliance & Operational Governance

IAM Governance: Expert knowledge of Distributed Cloud Edge Container API roles and least-privilege access enforcement.

Resiliency: Implementation of Availability Best Practices (Region/Zone/Rack awareness) for disconnected state reliability.

Strategic Liaison: Act as the primary technical point of contact for Google-certified System Integrators (SI) to ensure hardware meets GDC specifications.

Preferred Qualifications

Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect or Professional Data Engineer certification.

Experience in highly regulated sectors (Defense, Telco, Banking, or Healthcare).

Strong background in Linux Kernel tuning and Bare Metal performance optimization.