Sr. Cloud Engineer

Title: Sr. Cloud Engineer (AWS & Azure) Location: Houston, TX (1-2 days onsite per week in 77024) Duration: Contract-to-Hire Work Requirements: US Citizen, GC Holders or Authorized to Work in the US. W2/Direct-employment only. Key Points: This position will require at least one day onsite per week in Houston (77024) and non-local candidates will NOT be considered. Local candidates only. This position requires strong experience in AWS, with additional knowledge and experience in Azure Job Summary We are seeking a Senior Cloud Engineer to design, implement, and maintain scalable, secure, and cost-optimized cloud infrastructure. You will serve as a technical leader within a cross-functional team, driving cloud-native architecture, automation, and operational excellence across AWS and Azure environments. This role demands experience in infrastructure-as-code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, container orchestration, and cloud security. You will mentor junior engineers, collaborate with Security, and Application teams, and influence strategic cloud roadmap decisions. Key Responsibilities: Design Lead the design of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architectures with high availability, disaster recovery, and auto-scaling. Define landing zones, networking (VPC peering, Transit Gateway, ExpressRoute), and identity management (IAM, RBAC, SCPs). Create reference architectures and reusable IaC modules (Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi). Automation & Infrastructure as Code Own Terraform/CloudFormation repositories with module versioning, state management (remote backends), and drift detection. Implement GitOps workflows using ArgoCD, Flux, or AWS CodePipeline. Automate cloud operations via scripting (Python, Bash, Go) and configuration management (Ansible). CI/CD & Platform Engineering Build and maintain golden pipelines for microservices, serverless, and data workloads. Integrate security scanning (SCA, SAST, DAST) and policy-as-code (OPA, Checkov). Optimize build/deploy performance and enable self-service for development teams. Observability & Reliability Instrument full-stack observability (metrics, logs, traces) using Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Datadog, or Cloud-native tools. Define and track SLOs/SLIs; lead incident response and post-mortem processes. Implement chaos engineering practices and resilience testing. Security & Compliance Enforce least-privilege IAM, encryption-at-rest/transit, and secrets management (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager). Ensure compliance with SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR, HIPAA (as applicable). Conduct threat modeling and cloud security posture reviews. Cost Optimization & FinOps Implement tagging strategies, budget alerts, and rightsizing recommendations. Use tools like CloudHealth, AWS Cost Explorer, or Azure Cost Management to reduce spend 15-25% YoY. Mentorship & Leadership Mentor mid/junior engineers; conduct architecture reviews and brown-bag sessions. Participate in on-call rotation (1 week every 6-8 weeks) with follow-the-sun support. Required Qualifications: Experience 4+ years hands-on with cloud engineering at least one major cloud provider (AWS & Azure preferred). Proven track record delivering production-grade, multi-account/multi-region cloud environments. Technical Skills IaC: Terraform, CloudFormation; state management with S3/DynamoDB or Consul. Containers & Orchestration: Kubernetes (EKS/GKE/AKS), Helm, Kustomize; cluster autoscaling and node lifecycle management. CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or AWS CodeBuild/CodePipeline. Networking: VPC design, DNS (Route53), load balancing, CDN (CloudFront, Akamai), SD-WAN integration. Scripting: Python (boto3, azure-sdk) or Go; proficient in Linux systems. Observability: Prometheus + Grafana, ELK/EFK, OpenTelemetry; APM tools. Certifications (not required but preferred) AWS Azure Soft Skills Excellent documentation Strong communicator; able to present to executives. Our benefits package includes: Comprehensive medical benefits Competitive pay, 401(k) Retirement plan ...and much more About INSPYR Solutions: Technology is our focus and quality is our commitment. As a national expert in delivering flexible technology and talent solutions, we strategically align industry and technical expertise with our clients' business objectives and cultural needs. Our solutions are tailored to each client and include a wide variety of professional services, project, and talent solutions. By always striving for excellence and focusing on the human aspect of our business, we work seamlessly with our talent and clients to match the right solutions to the right opportunities. Learn more about us at inspyrsolutions.com. 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