Senior Cloud Engineer

📋 Job Overview

Earnest empowers ambitious professionals to make confident financial decisions and build the life they envision. Earnies are committed to helping borrowers move forward with confidence by offering smarter borrowing options with a clearer path to taking control of their debt. If you’re as passionate as we are about our mission, read more below, and let’s build something great together.

🏢 About Earnest

Earnest empowers ambitious professionals to make confident financial decisions and build the life they envision. Earnies are committed to helping borrowers move forward with confidence by offering smarter borrowing options with a clearer path to taking control of their debt. If you’re as passionate as we are about our mission, read more below, and let’s build something great together.

🎯 The Role

The Senior Cloud Engineer will report to the Engineering Manager, Infrastructure.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Architect, own, and evolve critical AWS infrastructure and multi-account cloud foundations that power Earnest’s high-availability, regulated lending platform.
• Define and drive service reliability standards (SLOs, observability maturity, and incident response frameworks) across engineering teams to systematically reduce MTTR and prevent repeat incidents.
• Lead the design and adoption of scalable Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/OpenTofu) and CI/CD tooling, treating internal infrastructure as a product that accelerates developer velocity.
• Partner with Security to embed automated security-first patterns and regulatory controls directly into the cloud lifecycle.
• Drive cloud cost efficiency across the platform by identifying architectural optimizations and establishing resource utilization standards.
• Mentor Cloud Engineers and software teams through technical design reviews, operational runbooks, and blameless post-incident analyses to raise the bar on engineering excellence.

📌 Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on experience building and managing reliable, scale-ready cloud systems (preferably in fintech or regulated spaces).
• Deep working knowledge of AWS core services, Linux environments, and core networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, TLS, VPCs).
• Proven track record scaling Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/OpenTofu) and container ecosystems (Kubernetes/Docker) in production.
• Solid experience with relational databases, modern observability toolstacks, and a passion for automating away repetitive tasks.
• A strong sense of ownership and curiosity—you comfortably navigate ambiguity and focus on long-term, durable solutions.
• Clear, approachable communication skills that make technical alignment across engineering, security, and product teams feel seamless.

⭐ Desirable Experience

• Experience running cloud infrastructure in fintech or similar financial environments (SOC2, PCI compliance).
• Hands-on involvement in FinOps practices or driving smart cloud cost optimizations.
• Background building developer self-service platforms or internal developer tools.
• Familiarity with AI/ML workloads or using AI tools to streamline operational workflows and incident triage.

🎁 Benefits

• Health, Dental, & Vision benefits plus savings plans
• Mac computers + work-from-home stipend to set up your home office
• Monthly internet and phone reimbursement
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
• 401(k) plan to help you save for retirement plus a company match
• Robust tuition reimbursement program
• $1,000 travel perk on each Earnie-versary to anywhere in the world
• Competitive days of annual PTO
• Competitive parental leave

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

This role will be based in the US.