Cloud Systems Engineer

Seeking a highly experienced Remote Cloud Systems Engineer to support growing Cloud Services practice. In particular, the successful candidate will help drive efforts to support the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) and National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) cloud initiatives. These strategic cloud initiatives intend to increase the bureau's IT efficiency, improve IT delivery, and reduce costs. The candidate must have extensive experience architecting and provisioning enterprise-level Cloud services, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).  

Supervisory Responsibilities: 

·     Non-Supervisory Role   

MUST BE WITHIN THE UNITED STATES AND A US CITIZEN

Requirements

The Cloud Systems Engineer will support NESDIS satellite ground systems infrastructure and the common services they provide to our global stakeholder community. These systems and services are deemed mission-critical technologies that receive, process, disseminate, store, and archive petabytes of environmental data and information collected from space daily in support of environmental science and the global stakeholder community.  

Specifically, the Cloud Systems Engineer is responsible for planning and engineering NESDIS' NCCF and NGE cloud computing infrastructure and applications. The Cloud Systems Engineer will implement and design server, network, and software configurations for a cloud computing infrastructure and applications focusing on DevOps principles. They will monitor the performance of the systems. The candidate should be familiar with standard concepts, practices, and procedures of cloud technology, including Software as Service (SaaS), Platform as Service (PaaS), or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The candidate will work closely with the Cloud Architect, who is responsible for designing the system architecture and interface control using requirements to enhance existing and build/develop new capabilities within the AWS NESDIS Common Cloud Framework (NCCF) to provide the future state of the NESDIS Ground Enterprise (NGE) with common services. This technical customer-facing role will be accountable for the end-to-end customer experience.  

• Plan, maintain and manage the current infrastructure environment within the federal customers' requirements, to ensure uptime and reliability (Operations & Maintenance) 
• Research, design, deploy, provision, and document new technologies implemented within the environment
• Experience working with Cloud Service Providers, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platforms 
• Architect, monitor and control consumption, of AWS Government Cloud, with input from the federal engineering team 

• Implement modern ground systems and applications and underlying technology stacks 
• Participate with the Information Security partners and implement cybersecurity updates to the system
• Provide reporting metrics to Project Manager and Federal team for infrastructure run within the environment
• Work collaboratively with other segments of the federal customer IT division to ensure end-customer success
• Contribute to all phases of system development and support with planning, analysis, modeling, simulation, testing, integration, documentation, and presentation 
• An intense focus will be on the technical documentation to be used for operational support for end-technologies 
• Set up new processes for our AWS Government Cloud environment, including data migration, backup, and recovery. Ensuring the system is always backed up and recoverable. 
• Provide support when needed (nights and weekends for deployments or incidents) 
• Support cloud optimization activities; performance and cost 

• Evaluate and recommend best-fit, commercially available, and FEDRAMP-compliant cloud services utilizing various cloud models (i.e., public, private, hybrid) to support NOAA's mission and specific business, technical, and security requirements. 
• Develops solutions and evaluates alternatives for private, public, and hybrid cloud models, including IaaS, PaaS, and other cloud services. 
• Researches and recommends cloud engineering techniques to enhance internal and external platforms, tools, and systems. 
• Develop cloud engineering system strategies/solutions to ensure application high availability in both hybrid (on-premise / cloud) and fully cloud-hosted applications to provide an 'always on' experience 
• Acts as a subject matter expert for end-to-end cloud systems engineering, including current and future providers, networking, provisioning, and management. 

• Defines optimal design patterns and solutions for high availability and disaster recovery for applications. 
• Ensures delivered solutions are realized in the time frame committed; works with project owners to size, scope, and identify risk. 
• Provides technical expertise in diagnosing and resolving issues, including determining and providing workaround solutions or escalation to owners. 
• Ensures delivered solutions meet technical and functional/non-functional performance requirements within. 
• Evaluate, design, and implement solutions for migrating on-premise applications to cloud hosting solutions 

• Design, develop modules, and integrate cloud capabilities using FEDRAMP-certified leading cloud providers, including Azure, AWS, and GCP. 
• Use computing design principles to develop robust, efficient, and secure cloud solutions based on customer requirements. 
• Provide implementation guidance/support to the team and program manager throughout the project life cycle. 
• Develop tools and documentation to enable support organizations to resolve customer issues, including complex technical scenarios dealing with the cloud architecture.  

Required Skills/Abilities:  

The successful candidate must be self-driven and possess the analytical skills to resolve challenging technical issues, often through collaboration with other technical subject matter experts. The candidate will serve as a technical resource to the team regarding cloud engineering, security, performance, deployment, and troubleshooting. The candidate must demonstrate the ability to think strategically about the customer's business needs and requirements, propose and develop systems engineering techniques, appropriate solutions, and solve technical challenges. 

• In-depth understanding of cloud computing technologies, IT business drivers, and emerging computing trends and technologies. 
• Experience and understanding of large-scale infrastructure deployments in enterprise-wide environments required 
• Proven track record of building deep technical relationships with senior IT executives and growing data services in mission-critical/significant or highly strategic accounts 

• Extensive experience gathering business and technical requirements for Cloud Services-based services and applications 
• Extensive experience analyzing the customer's current Infrastructure and applications, developing alternatives analysis for migrating to the cloud, and making recommendations on best-fit cloud solutions and service providers 
• In-depth working knowledge of FEDRAMP and extensive experience applying best practices for building/deploying secure and reliable services and applications on FEDRAMP-compliant Cloud platforms 
• Must possess an in-depth understanding of networking principles, technologies, and cloud security practices.  
• Experience using coding languages such as Perl, Java, PowerShell, PHP, Ruby, Python, etc. 

• Experience architecting and building scalable, automated Infrastructure 
• Experience with Amazon Web Services, code-defined Infrastructure, configuration management tools, and CI/CD 
• Experience with AWS Lambda and "Serverless" systems 
• Experience in large-scale enterprise IT environments 

• Experience in a consultative, client-facing consulting role 
• Understanding of load balancing, geo-redundancy, CDN, and VPN technologies. 
• Knowledge of Cloud development patterns and strategies (including IaaS, PaaS, Security, Compute, Storage, and networking) 
• Functional knowledge of Infrastructure as Code – Automation using Ansible, Chef, Puppet Powershell, Terraform, etc. 
• Experience in high-performance computing (HPC) and clusters, machine learning, artificial intelligence (ai) applications, and frameworks in a cloud environment 
• Excellent written, verbal, and analytical skills 

• Ability to obtain a Public Trust Clearance 
• Developing GitLab CI/CD pipelines, utilizing Terraform, CloudFormation, and AWS CDK.
• Implementing DevSecOps in GitLab.
• Implementing graph databases using AWS Neptune.
• Implementing event-driven solutions using AWS services like SQS, SNS, Lambda, EventBridge.
• Architecting, engineering, and deploying/provisioning secure and robust cloud services, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
• Acting as a subject matter expert for end-to-end cloud architecture, including networking, provisioning, and management.
• Defining optimal design patterns and solutions for high availability and disaster recovery for applications.
• Architecting, engineering, and integrating cloud capabilities using FEDRAMP-certified leading cloud providers like AWS.
• Applying technical knowledge and customer insights to create a modernization roadmap.
• Designing and implementing solutions for migrating on-premise applications to cloud hosting solutions.
• Providing implementation guidance/support to the customer throughout the project life cycle. 

Education and Experience: 

·     BS/BA in Computer Science or related discipline 

·     Preferred Certifications: AWS Certified SysOps Administrator or AWS Certified Practioner; Microsoft Systems Engineer; Systems Engineer with Google Cloud Platform: Infrastructure 

·     4+ years of experience computing and developing enterprise Cloud Services (Iaas, PaaS, SaaS) using leading cloud providers such as AWS, GCP, and Azure. It must include networking, computing, storage, database, identity management/access control, monitoring, etc. 

·     4+ years of experience migrating on-premise workloads to the public or hybrid cloud environments and deploying cloud-ready applications.  

Optional Preferred Skills: 

·     Experience in high-performance computing (HPC) and clusters, machine learning and artificial intelligence (ai) applications and frameworks in a cloud environment. 

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