Sr. AWS DevOps Engineer - Washington - Finch AI

Description

Senior AWS DevOps Engineer

Clearance: Must be eligible for a US Security Clearance (US Citizenship required)

Location: Washington, DC (remote, preference to local candidates)

We are seeking a seasoned Senior AWS DevOps Engineer to lead the design, automation, and maintenance of our customer's AWS environment. This role ensures infrastructure remains robust, secure, and scalable while driving cost optimization, security best practices, and incident response strategies. The ideal candidate has hands-on experience with Terraform for infrastructure automation, deep expertise in AWS services, and a strong background in cloud security, cost management, and disaster recovery. Experience migrating cloud workloads to AWS is required. Additionally, this role involves mentoring engineers, improving DevOps processes, and collaborating with development teams in an Agile Scrum environment to maintain and enhance cloud infrastructure.

Responsibilities:

AWS Cloud Infrastructure & Automation:

• Design, build, and maintain AWS cloud environments with a focus on automation and security.
• Automate provisioning and management of AWS resources using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) with Terraform (familiarity with AWS CloudFormation and AWS CDK a plus).
• Assist with implementing proactive security measures, including vulnerability remediation, patching, and firewall rule management.
• Maintain compliance with security standards and internal policies, supporting security audits and assessments.
• Monitor AWS cost usage and provide cost optimization recommendations, ensuring efficient resource scaling.

Disaster Recovery & Performance Optimization:

• Maintain and test backup and disaster recovery procedures to ensure business continuity.
• Support and participate in SES IT Service Continuity drills and report on system resilience.
• Implement performance monitoring and alerting using tools like Datadog, AWS CloudWatch, and Splunk.
• Tune AWS resources for optimal performance, ensuring reliability and scalability of cloud services.

Incident & Problem Management:

• Respond to Severity 1 & 2 incidents according to predefined SLAs and ensure rapid resolution.
• Conduct Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and document mitigation strategies for major incidents.
• Improve system reliability by analyzing and addressing infrastructure bottlenecks.

CI/CD & Agile Integration:

• Manage CI/CD pipelines to automate software deployment and infrastructure updates.
• Collaborate in an Agile Scrum environment, participating in sprint planning, backlog grooming, and retrospectives.
• Work closely with developers to integrate infrastructure automation into the software development

Documentation & Compliance:

• Maintain comprehensive AWS infrastructure documentation, including architectural diagrams and firewall configurations.
• Securely manage access credentials and account privileges, ensuring adherence to security best practices.
• Ensure all changes follow compliance frameworks and are properly documented in Git and JIRA.

Knowledge and Skills:

• Deep experience with AWS infrastructure and services such as EC2, VPC, ALB, Lambda, SSM, EKS, ECS, CF, etc.
• Virtualization and containerization using Docker, AWS ECS, Kubernetes, AWS EKS, and Fargate

Preferred Requirements:

• 8+ years of AWS cloud engineering experience, with a strong background in DevOps & infrastructure automation.
• Hands-on experience and fluency with Terraform (familiarity with CloudFormation & AWS CDK a plus)
• Extensive experience with containerization and orchestration tools (Docker, Dockerfile AWS ECS, Fargate) and with building secure containers and sidecars.
• Expertise in AWS security, including IAM, firewall management, vulnerability scanning, and compliance.
• Experience in cost monitoring and optimization of AWS resources.
• Strong knowledge of disaster recovery strategies, backup management, and system resilience planning.
• Experience with creating CI/CD pipelines and automation tools like Jenkins, or Code Pipeline.
• Proficiency in Linux administration (Amazon Linux, RedHat, Rocky, Ubuntu).
• Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools such as Datadog, Splunk, CloudWatch, and AWS Config.
• Strong troubleshooting skills and experience with incident response & Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

Preferred Qualifications:

• AWS certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect or AWS Certified DevOps Engineer.
• Experience working in a customer-facing role or a managed services environment.
• Prior experience migrating cloud workloads from on-premises or legacy systems to AWS.

Education and Work experience:

• Bachelor's Degree in a related field or equivalent experience
• 6+ years' experience in a specifically-DevOps role supporting software development and distributed applications.

Preferred Certifications:

• AWS Certifications such as AWS Certified DevOps Engineer or AWS Certified Solutions Architect.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary and benefits package.
• Health, dental, vision, long and short-term disability, 401k matching, basic and supplemental life insurance, employee assistance program
• Opportunities for professional growth and exposure to cutting-edge AWS technologies.
• Liberal leave policy
• Ability to work remote/hybrid

How to Apply:

• Please submit your resume with a cover letter outlining your relevant experience, including details of past cloud workload migrations, AWS security best practices, and automation projects.

About FINCH AI

Finch AI is a fast-growing, fast-paced software development organization; our mission is to build new ways of interacting with information. We do that by leveraging game-changing intellectual property, cloud infrastructure expertise, and a staff that is second to none. Together, we build and support products that address complex, real-time data and analytics needs in the enterprise.

Our teams are comprised of successful people that enjoy solving problems, engaging in substantive technical discussions and have passion for their work. We have very high expectations in terms of skill, motivation, self-organization and productivity. We look for people who excel working in groups, virtual and collocated, as well as those who are comfortable with fast paced agile development.

Finch AI is an equal opportunity employer.