Cloud Data Platform Administrator

Role: Cloud Data Platform Administrator

Client Location: Washington, DC (Remote)

Contract: 10+ months contract (possible to extend)

Note: Remote

Job description:

Cloud Data Platform Administrator is the hands-on technical resource responsible for implementing, securing, and operating EDP. This role is accountable for platform operations, security, and governance configuration end-to-end—ensuring the environment is compliant, reliable, cost-controlled, and enables secure analytics and AI/ML workloads at scale

Required Experience:

• Identity & Access Management proficiency: SSO concepts, SCIM provisioning, group based RBAC, service principals, least-privilege patterns.

• Security fundamentals: secrets management, secure connectivity, audit logging, access monitoring, and evidence-ready operations.

• Automation skills: IaC using Terraform, CLI, and REST APIs for repeatable configuration and environment promotion.

• 3 years'' experience building AWS Infrastructure using Terraform. 

• 3 years'' experience building CI/CD pipelines, preferably using Azure DevOps or Gitlab. 

• CI/CD practices for promotion across SDLC environments.

• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving; communicate clearly during incidents and changes.

• Cloud platform expertise (AWS ): IAM roles/policies, object storage security patterns, networking basics (VPC concepts), logging/monitoring integration.

• Hands-on experience with AWS security and networking services including PrivateLink, Secrets Manager/Systems Manager integration, CloudWatch/CloudTrail integration, S3 bucket policies, cross-account access patterns, and KMS encryption key management.

Education / Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent practical experience.

Highly valued(Desirable, but not required) knowledge, skills and experience

• SQL proficiency and data engineering fundamentals for troubleshooting query performance issues, understanding ETL/ELT workflow patterns, and debugging data pipeline failures; basic Python/Scala familiarity for notebook/code issue diagnosis.

• Experience with compliance and regulatory frameworks (FedRAMP, HIPAA, SOC2, or similar) including implementation of data residency requirements, retention policies, and audit-ready evidence collection.

• SLA/SLO management, incident management, and stakeholder communication skills; ability to define platform service levels, produce operational reports, translate technical issues to business stakeholders, and manage vendor relationships (Databricks account teams).

Certifications:

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate or Professional

The Contractor shall deliver, but not limited to, the following:

• Implement platform monitoring/alerting, operational dashboards, and health checks; maintain runbooks and operational procedures.

• Provision and administer AWS GovCloud infrastructure components supporting EDP environments (networking, compute, storage, IAM, logging/monitoring).

• Implement and maintain standardized “secure-by-default” configurations aligned to agency security requirements (baseline hardening, patching coordination, configuration management).

• Operate cloud services supporting data and analytics platforms (e.g., storage integrations, encryption/KMS patterns, secure service endpoints, VPC constructs).

• Establish and maintain operational monitoring/alerting, health checks, runbooks, and incident support in coordination with platform and security teams.

• Manage change control for upgrades, feature rollouts, configuration changes, and integration changes; document impacts and rollback plans.

• Enable and maintain audit logging and access/event visibility; support security reviews and evidence requests.

• Configure logging and auditability (e.g., CloudTrail/CloudWatch patterns) and support evidence collection for security/compliance activities.

• Coordinate secure networking patterns (private connectivity, egress controls, firewall/proxy constraints) with network and security stakeholders.

• Build and manage POC environments (isolated accounts/VPCs where applicable), ensuring repeatability, cost controls, and safe teardown.

• Coordinate secure connectivity and guardrails with cloud/network teams: private connectivity patterns, egress controls, firewall/proxy needs.

• Implement cost guardrails: cluster policies, auto-termination, scheduling, workload sizing standards, and capacity planning.

• Produce usage/cost insights and optimization recommendations; address waste drivers (idle compute, oversized clusters, inefficient jobs).

• Automate administration and configuration using APIs/CLI/IaC (e.g., Terraform) to reduce manual drift and improve repeatability.

• Maintain platform documentation: configuration baselines, security/governance standards, onboarding guides, and troubleshooting references.

• Manage third-party integrations and ecosystem connectivity, including BI tool integrations (e.g., Power BI), and external metadata catalog integrations.

• Conduct capacity planning and scalability analysis, including forecasting concurrent user/workload growth, platform scaling strategies, and proactive resource allocation during peak usage periods. • Facilitate user onboarding and enablement, including new user/team onboarding procedures, training coordination, workspace access provisioning, and creation of self service documentation/guides.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to receiving your reply today.