Lead AWS Cloud Platform Engineer

Lead AWS Cloud Platform Engineer

We are seeking an experienced Lead AWS Cloud Platform Engineer to drive the design, automation, security, and operational excellence of a large-scale AWS cloud environment. This is a high-impact leadership role for a hands-on cloud expert who thrives in modern platform engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and cloud transformation initiatives.

As a technical leader, you will help shape cloud strategy, establish engineering best practices, and build scalable, secure, and highly available cloud solutions that enable innovation across the organization.

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What You''ll Do

Cloud Platform Engineering

• Design, implement, and manage enterprise AWS cloud infrastructure and platform services.
• Develop secure, scalable, and highly available cloud solutions aligned with business and technology goals.
• Define cloud architecture standards, governance, security controls, and operational guardrails.
• Lead cloud transformation and application modernization initiatives.

Automation & Infrastructure as Code

• Build and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using Terraform, CloudFormation, and AWS CDK.
• Develop automation frameworks and policy-as-code solutions to streamline cloud operations.
• Create and maintain Ansible playbooks and Python-based automation tools.
• Drive continuous improvement through cloud-native automation and self-service platforms.

Reliability, Operations & Performance

• Improve system reliability, scalability, availability, and observability across cloud environments.
• Proactively monitor infrastructure and resolve incidents through root cause analysis and remediation.
• Define operational standards for monitoring, patching, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and system health.
• Support SRE practices and enhance service lifecycle management from design through production operations.

DevOps & Platform Enablement

• Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines and modern software delivery processes.
• Partner with development, architecture, security, and operations teams to accelerate cloud adoption.
• Advocate DevOps principles, automation-first approaches, and engineering best practices.
• Enable developer productivity through platform engineering and cloud-native solutions.

Containerization & Modern Architecture

• Design and support Kubernetes-based environments and container orchestration platforms.
• Lead adoption of microservices, immutable infrastructure, service mesh technologies, and cloud-native architectures.
• Support container security, networking, and operational best practices.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Serve as a trusted technical advisor and cloud subject matter expert.
• Mentor engineers and guide technical decision-making across teams.
• Communicate architectural vision, technical strategies, and implementation roadmaps to stakeholders.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend innovative solutions that support business growth.

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Required Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor''s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Equivalent combination of education and relevant experience will be considered.

Certifications

• At least one AWS certification required, such as:
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect
  • AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
• Additional cloud, DevOps, Kubernetes, or FinOps certifications are highly valued.

Experience

• 10+ years of overall IT experience, including systems engineering, platform engineering, or software development.
• 5+ years of hands-on AWS cloud engineering, administration, or automation experience.
• 3+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) or reliability-focused operations.
• Proven success leading cloud transformation and modernization initiatives.
• Strong Linux systems administration background.

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Required Technical Skills

AWS Cloud Services

Strong hands-on production experience with:

• AWS VPC
• EC2
• S3
• RDS
• IAM
• EBS & EFS
• Elastic Load Balancing
• Lambda
• CloudWatch
• CloudTrail
• Direct Connect
• Security Groups
• Network ACLs
• Amazon EKS

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

• Terraform
• AWS CloudFormation
• AWS CDK
• Ansible
• Python automation and scripting
• Policy as Code

Development & Scripting

• Python
• Linux Shell/Bash scripting
• Software engineering lifecycle experience
• AWS Lambda development (Python/Boto3 preferred)
• Experience with languages such as Java, Go, Groovy, or similar

DevOps & CI/CD

Experience with:

• Git
• Bitbucket
• Jenkins
• Jira
• Artifactory
• Automated build, deployment, and release management processes

Containers & Kubernetes

• Kubernetes administration and implementation
• Docker or OCI-compliant containers
• Container orchestration platforms
• Cloud-native container architectures

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Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on Amazon EKS and ECS experience.
• Experience with service mesh solutions such as Istio or AWS App Mesh.
• Knowledge of container security tools and best practices.
• Experience with observability and monitoring platforms including:
  • Datadog
  • New Relic
  • AppDynamics
  • Jaeger
  • Thanos
• Exposure to Agile/Scrum environments.
• Experience supporting AI/ML initiatives on AWS using services such as SageMaker, Bedrock, Kendra, Lambda, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures.
• FinOps experience and cloud cost optimization knowledge.

Ref: #851-Rockville-S1