Cloud Engineer

Initiative: 5yr+ CMS Project; App Modernization

Title: Cloud Engineer

Duration: 6mo contract, extensions likely

Interview Process: 1 Round (MS Teams)

Start Date: end of November/early December

Compensation: $60-70/hr (W2)

Job Summary

We are seeking a Cloud Engineer to support a large-scale CMS healthcare modernization initiative. This engineer will help migrate and modernize a legacy, business-critical application into AWS within an aggressive timeline.

The ideal candidate has strong hands-on experience with AWS infrastructure, cloud automation, Infrastructure as Code, Kubernetes/EKS, CI/CD, Linux, and DevSecOps. The environment will initially require technical discovery, so this person must be comfortable working through ambiguity, evaluating unfamiliar systems, and independently recommending solutions based on engineering best practices.

This role will support a 24/7 production environment and offers the opportunity to contribute to both the initial migration and longer-term cloud modernization effort.

Must-Haves

• 5+ years of hands-on experience designing, implementing, or supporting AWS cloud infrastructure
• Strong experience with cloud automation and Infrastructure as Code, including Terraform and/or AWS CloudFormation
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and containerized environments; Amazon EKS experience strongly preferred
• Experience with Docker or comparable container technologies
• Experience implementing or supporting CI/CD and DevSecOps pipelines, ideally using Jenkins and GitHub
• Hands-on scripting/automation experience using Python, Go, Groovy, Bash, or similar languages
• Solid cloud networking fundamentals, including VPCs, VPN connectivity, routing, network integrations, and redundancy
• Experience integrating security and engineering best practices into cloud infrastructure and deployment processes
• Strong troubleshooting skills with the ability to perform technical discovery and root-cause analysis
• Ability to take an open-ended requirement, evaluate potential solutions, communicate technical tradeoffs, and independently execute the recommended approach
• Strong attention to detail and ability to work effectively within a fast-paced environment with evolving requirements
• Must be eligible to obtain a Public Trust clearance and complete clearance requirements prior to starting
• Willingness to participate in a rotating on-call schedule and occasional off-hours production releases

Plusses

• Previous data center/on-premises to AWS migration experience
• Experience building a new AWS/cloud environment from the ground up
• Legacy application modernization or re-platforming experience
• Hands-on Amazon EKS experience
• Experience with Ansible for configuration management
• AWS migration tooling experience, including AWS DMS or application migration tools
• AWS certifications
• Traditional infrastructure and LAN/WAN networking experience
• Hybrid-cloud or multicloud experience
• Rancher experience
• Experience supporting highly available 24/7 production environments
• Previous CMS, Medicare, federal healthcare, or government contracting experience

Project Overview

Phase 1: Migration + Initial Modernization

The initial phase will focus on discovering the existing legacy environment and migrating the application from its current data center into AWS within approximately five months.

Because portions of the existing infrastructure and application architecture have yet to be fully discovered, Cloud Engineers will help assess the environment, identify dependencies and integrations, establish AWS infrastructure, and determine the best technical approach for the migration.

Example Phase 1 work:

• Assess the existing legacy infrastructure and application environment
• Identify networking, compute, security, application, and integration dependencies
• Design and provision AWS infrastructure
• Establish secure connectivity between systems and external integrations
• Automate infrastructure deployment using Terraform and/or CloudFormation
• Troubleshoot migration and integration issues
• Begin transitioning legacy components toward a modern architecture

Phase 2: Cloud Modernization + DevSecOps

Following the initial migration, the team will continue modernizing the legacy application toward a more scalable, automated, and cloud-native AWS architecture.

Example Phase 2 work:

• Containerize application components
• Deploy and manage workloads through Kubernetes/Amazon EKS
• Expand Infrastructure as Code and cloud automation
• Build and improve Jenkins CI/CD pipelines
• Integrate DevSecOps and security controls into deployment workflows
• Develop automation using Python, Go, Groovy, Bash, or similar scripting
• Implement monitoring, logging, scalability, resiliency, and platform operations capabilities
• Support production deployments and ongoing cloud platform operations
• Partner with development, architecture, security, and infrastructure teams on continued modernization

Work Environment

• Fully Remote (EST schedule)
• Initial 6-month contract with anticipated extension into the broader multi-year program
• Public Trust clearance required before starting
• Rotating production on-call responsibilities, currently anticipated approximately once every 1–2 months
• Some off-hours release support may be required for the 24/7 production environment