Cloud Engineer - Infrastructure as Code

Contract Role: Cloud Engineer - Infrastructure as Code

Contract Location: Belfast

Contract Duration: 12 months initially (with potential extension up to 2 years)

Contract Start Date: Immediate

Contract Classification: Inside IR35

Role Overview

This is an opportunity to join a large Tier 1 financial services organisation. The team is dedicated to evolving the application and data hosting environments into an integrated, hybrid multi-cloud ecosystem, primarily leveraging AWS and Google Cloud. We focus on building, automating, and optimizing the foundational cloud infrastructure and services that empower developers to innovate rapidly and securely. In this role, you will design, implement, and maintain scalable, resilient, and secure cloud platforms and solutions, embodying a "you build it, you run it" philosophy to ensure operational excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Cloud Platform Engineering: Design, implement, and manage core cloud infrastructure and services on AWS and GCP, focusing on compute, storage, networking, security, and identity management.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Develop, maintain, and optimize cloud infrastructure using IaC tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation (AWS), and Deployment Manager (GCP). Create reusable modules and blueprints to standardize deployments.
• Automation & Orchestration: Automate the provisioning, configuration, and management of cloud resources and services. Develop scripts and tools (e.g., Python, Go, Bash) to streamline operational tasks and improve efficiency.
• Containerization & Orchestration: Implement and manage containerization technologies (Docker) and orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, e.g., Amazon EKS, Google Kubernetes Engine) to support cloud-native application deployments.
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE): Embrace a "you build it, you run it" mindset. Take ownership of the reliability, performance, and availability of the cloud platforms and services you build. Implement robust monitoring, alerting, and logging solutions, and participate in on-call rotations to ensure rapid incident response and resolution.
• Security & Compliance: Implement and enforce cloud security best practices, ensuring compliance with policies, industry standards, and regulatory requirements. Configure IAM roles, network security groups, firewalls, and encryption.
• CI/CD Pipeline Integration: Collaborate with development teams to integrate cloud infrastructure provisioning and management into CI/CD pipelines, enabling automated and continuous delivery.
• Documentation & Knowledge Sharing: Create and maintain comprehensive documentation for cloud architectures, configurations, and operational procedures. Mentor junior engineers and contribute to knowledge sharing within the team.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Proven experience as a Cloud Engineer, DevOps Engineer, or SRE in a mid-level or senior capacity.
• Strong hands-on experience with public cloud platforms, specifically AWS and/or Google Cloud (GCP) .
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Hands-on Expertise: Demonstrable experience with the following:
• Programming Languages: Python and Go.
• CI/CD: Terraform, Harness, Tekton, Jenkins, etc.
• Test Automation: Terratest, Cucumber, Pytest-BDD, AWS Fault Injection Simulator (FIS), Chaos Mesh, etc.
• Solid understanding and experience with containerization technologies (Docker) and orchestration platforms (Kubernetes).
• Experience implementing and managing CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong understanding of networking concepts (VPC, subnets, routing, firewalls), security best practices, and IAM in a cloud environment.
• Experience with monitoring, logging, and alerting tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, ELK stack, CloudWatch, Stackdriver).
• A strong commitment to Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles and practices, including operational ownership.

Preferred Qualifications & Skills

• Public cloud provider certifications (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, Google Cloud Professional DevOps Engineer).
• Experience with serverless computing (e.g., AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions).
• Familiarity with configuration management tools like Ansible.
• Experience with database services (relational and NoSQL) in the cloud.
• Knowledge of disaster recovery and business continuity strategies in a multi-cloud environment.
• Experience with GitOps principles and tools.