Cloud Operations Engineer

Nelnet Business Services (NBS), a division of Nelnet, Inc., specializes in payment technology, educational services, and learning management solutions tailored for educational and faith-based organizations. We proudly serve over 1,300 higher education institutions, 11,500 K-12 schools, 3,500 churches, and millions of individual students, families, and supporters globally. Our commitment to service fosters enduring and trustworthy partnerships, while our emphasis on creativity and innovative solutions empowers our customer communities to flourish.

As part of the Nelnet family, the advantages at NBS extend beyond our comprehensive benefits package. You will be embraced by a community that values you as an individual and is united by our mission to create opportunities for people in their learning and working environments.

We are seeking a Cloud Operations Engineer who will be instrumental in guaranteeing the stability, performance, and availability of the organization's IT infrastructure. This role involves designing, implementing, and maintaining the systems, tools, and processes essential for effective software development, deployment, and operations. The Cloud Operations Engineer will collaborate with development, security, and IT operations teams, automate workflows, and ensure the seamless delivery of high-quality applications.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Develop, construct, and enhance continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
2. Implement best practices for automated testing, code quality assessments, and deployment automation.
3. Engage extensively with Microsoft cloud-hosted code management services for repositories and pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub, and GitHub Actions).
4. Deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications utilizing Kubernetes, understanding key concepts such as pods, services, deployments, and namespaces.
5. Assess system performance, identify potential bottlenecks, devise solutions, and implement changes through the change management process.
6. Design, implement, and monitor enterprise-grade secure fault-tolerant systems (e.g., Datadog, Azure Application Insights).
7. Define and enhance Build & Release best practices by collaborating with teams and educating stakeholders, ensuring traceability and auditability of changes.
8. Guarantee continuous availability of various DevOps tools supporting Software Configuration Management (SCM) and Release Management, including Source Control, Continuous Integration, and Change Management.
9. Collaborate with cross-functional teams in the design, development, and implementation of scalable enterprise features aimed at enhancing developer productivity, environment monitoring, and self-healing capabilities.
10. Create infrastructure automation tools and frameworks.
11. Integrate newly developed and existing applications into cloud environments.
12. Automate deployment pipelines in a scalable, secure, and reliable manner.
13. Utilize application monitoring tools to troubleshoot and diagnose environmental issues.
14. Foster a culture of automation, ensuring that repetitive tasks, including security controls, are automated.
15. Work closely with Cloud Infrastructure, Security, and Development teams to uphold organizational best practices, policies, and procedures.
16. Possess hands-on experience with public cloud platforms (AWS and Azure); multi-cloud experience is preferred.

Salary for the role is: $80,000

Experience Required:

1. 3+ years of experience with AWS DevOps, cloud architecture, networking, deployment processes, and infrastructure as code tools.
2. Industry certifications (e.g., Azure, AWS, Kubernetes).
3. Proven experience in solving complex problems, creating algorithms, and navigating challenging requirements.
4. Experience in software development within an agile, iterative environment.

Competencies – Skills/Knowledge/Abilities:

1. Contributes to a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
2. Educates teams on the adoption and support of DevSecOps practices and tools.
3. Excellent verbal and written communication skills, capable of conveying technical concepts and strategies at all organizational levels.
4. Detail-oriented, critical thinker with exceptional problem-solving abilities.
5. Able to coach, mentor, and teach team members while managing a dynamic work environment.
6. Effective organizational and time management skills.
7. Strong programming skills (Python, Bash, or PowerShell).
8. Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines in a globally distributed environment.
9. Familiarity with Git, Docker, and container orchestration.

Our benefits package includes medical, dental, vision, HSA and FSA, generous earned time off, 401K/student loan repayment, life insurance & AD&D insurance, employee assistance program, employee stock purchase program, tuition reimbursement, performance-based incentive pay, short- and long-term disability, and a robust wellness program.

Nelnet is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to ensuring that qualified applicants are employed and that employees are treated fairly during employment, without regard to race, color, religion/creed, national origin, gender, or sex, marital status, age, disability, use of a guide dog or service animal, sexual orientation, military/veteran status, or any other status protected by Federal or State law or local ordinance.

Qualified individuals with disabilities who require reasonable accommodations in order to apply or compete for positions at Nelnet may request such accommodations by contacting Corporate Recruiting.

Nelnet is a Drug-Free and Tobacco-Free Workplace.

For over 40 years, we've been serving our customers, associates, and communities to make dreams possible.