Cloud Architect

Title : Cloud Architect

Location : Remote / Hybrid ( if candidate's are local to Maryland)

Fulltime with Sparksoft

Certification :

• Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration (EX280) or equivalent
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate or higher; or equivalent.

The ideal candidate for this role has 8-10 years of general IT experience that includes development, DevOps, ProdOps, Security and Performance Analysis; and at least 4 years as a cloud and/or platform architect. The candidate must be a clear and effective communicator that utilizes story-telling techniques to convey information that is clear to both technical and business-oriented client stakeholders. The role includes working with client leadership and counterparts to develop innovation solutions to tackle complex problems. The ideal candidate may also lead or assist in triaging complex problems with the engineering team and/or other vendors.

As this role deals specifically with Red Hat OpenShift, the candidate must have hands-on experience with administering, configuring and using OpenShift within a large enterprise landscape with multiple tenant applications/organizations. Ideally, the candidate is up to date with latest Red Hat OpenShift offerings. The candidate will be working on managing operators, customizing OpenShift installations and addressing feature requests with automation wherever possible. As automation is at the heart of our engineering team, the candidate will need to be familiar with IaC tooling such as Ansible, GitHub and Jenkins. Additionally, the candidate must also have robust AWS Cloud experience as the platform utilizes many AWS cloud features. Knowledge and experience with other cloud vendors such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform is a big plus. Full-stack knowledge is also a plus as we also help manage a DevSecOps workflow that deploys containerized applications to OpenShift.

The candidate will also provide direction to a motivated engineering team and work periodically with Tier 2 resources to help resolve urgent issues related to the uptime of our platform. Architects successful in this role also enjoy and have a knack for triage/troubleshooting, automation and having a drive for always improving technical and functional processes.

Finally, the candidate will work alongside the senior architect and client stakeholders, to establish the forward-thinking direction of the platform and program. This also includes participating in traditional Agile ceremonies as well as planning Themes, Initiatives and Epics for the program.

ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES:

Oversee the maintenance of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Ansible, Lambda, AWS CloudFormation, Terraform.Design automated, containerized cloud application platform solutions and integrate workloads to containerized workflows with automated CI/CD pipelines.Collaborate with Agile scrum teams or tenants to establish and manage Jenkins CI/CD pipelines.Architect code analysis tools such as SonarQube and Fortify into the CI/CD pipelines.Troubleshoot Infrastructure issues, collaborate with AWS support for resolution.Architect and help the engineering team develop automation to reduce the routine manual effort.Architect and assist the engineering team develop reference applications for OpenShift that are intended to demonstrate functionality.Must be experienced in common languages and frameworks.Deep understanding into the inner workings of OpenShift, working on managing operators, customizing OpenShift installations and addressing feature requests with automation wherever possible.Primary focus on the Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) activities within the Continuous Delivery Pipeline.Assist in tuning and resolving the bottlenecks for various operational and performance challenges.Establish and maintain consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.Support enhancing the platform functions and operations, continuously evolving in terms of ease of operations, improved performance, and monitoring the workloads simplified.Provide direction for the future of the platform.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE:

• 8+ years of IT experience.
• 4+ years of relevant experience as a cloud and/or platform architect.
• DevOps experience in an AWS Cloud environment is a must using services like EC2, AWS S3, IAM, VPC Peering, RDS, NAT Gateway, etc.
• In depth knowledge in OpenShift/Kubernetes, preferably 4.x, ArgoCD and GitOps is a must.
• Experience with System configuration tools like Ansible.
• Experience in creating Build, Deployment config files for applications on OpenShift.
• Firsthand experience in building CI/CD pipelines with Red Hat OpenShift/OCP.
• Proficient scripting skills in Perl/python/shell scripting.
• Experience with logging tools such as Vector, Fluent-Bit, and Splunk.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools such as New Relic, and Dynatrace.
• Good communication skills, self-motivated and positive attitude to work independently in a team environment.
• Languages Frameworks: Java, Scala, Python, Angular/NodeJS, MonogDB, Postgres, etc.
• DevOps: Jenkins, Python, Groovy, Ploigos
• Candidates must be able to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance.
• Candidates must have lived in the United States 3 out of the past 5 years.

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE:

• Comprehensive understanding of cloud delivery models: PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS.
• Knowledge, skills, and abilities to deploy OpenShift Container Platform in both public and private cloud.
• AWS Sysops administrator, DevOps engineer certifications are a plus.

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor s degree in computer science, Information Technology or equivalent.
• Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration (EX280) or equivalent
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate or higher; or equivalent.