Senior Cloud Engineer

Job summary

Seeking an experienced Senior Cloud Engineer to serve as a hands-on technical lead supporting the delivery of a cloud-native, event-driven platform built on AWS. This role will work closely with the Solution Architect to implement a Kafka/MSK-based event bus, RPC-driven core services, and real-time WebSocket-driven user experiences. The Senior Cloud Engineer will guide engineering teams, drive design decisions, and ensure alignment with DevSecOps and VA enterprise standards.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in cloud engineering, software engineering, or related roles within enterprise environments.
• Strong experience with AWS cloud services and cloud-native architectures.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka or AWS MSK.
• Experience designing and implementing event-driven architectures and distributed systems.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
• Experience implementing real-time streaming or WebSocket-based systems.
• Strong understanding of DevSecOps practices and CI/CD pipelines.
• Ability to lead technical efforts and mentor junior engineers.
• Eligible to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance.
• Experience supporting VA or other Federal environments and familiarity with enterprise compliance standards.
• Experience with Appian or integration with low-code platforms.
• Experience with observability and monitoring tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack).
• Understanding of healthcare interoperability or scheduling systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement cloud-native microservices supporting RPC-based appointment and scheduling workflows.
• Develop and maintain Kafka/MSK event producers and consumers to support event-driven data flows.
• Implement and manage event routing patterns including topic segmentation, schema versioning, and replay strategies.
• Build and integrate real-time WebSocket-based streaming solutions enabling live UI updates without refresh.
• Implement dead-letter queue handling, retry strategies, and resiliency patterns for event processing.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to support interoperability with external healthcare and VA systems.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation using Terraform, Jenkins, and Packer.
• Deploy and manage containerized applications using Kubernetes and Docker.
• Implement observability solutions using Prometheus, Grafana, Elasticsearch, and Kibana.
• Ensure secure system design leveraging Vault, IAM, and Zero Trust principles.
• Support Agile delivery and participate in design reviews, sprint planning, and technical discussions.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to engineering team members.
• Drive design decisions for event schemas, integration patterns, and streaming architectures.
• Ensure adherence to architecture standards, coding practices, and DevSecOps processes.
• Identify risks and performance bottlenecks and implement optimizations for scalability and reliability.

Skills

Security clearance

Relocation