Senior/Staff DevOps Engineer (CDC)

About Skylight

Skylight is a digital consultancy using design and technology to help government agencies deliver better public services. We’re at the forefront of a civic movement to reinvent how all levels of government serve families, patients, and many others in today's digital world. If you want to play a part in driving this critical movement forward, we’d love for you to join our growing team of public interest technologists. The work we do matters.

About the Job

At Skylight, DevOps engineers work with developers throughout the software development life cycle to ensure code can be reliably and repeatedly released on demand with a high degree of quality. They understand both software development and operations, with expertise in areas such as networking, security, test automation, and continuous integration/deployment.

What You’ll Do

• Build and improve infrastructure that powers critical public health tools for state, local, territorial, and tribal partners
• Enable a smooth, reliable developer experience across web-based stacks like Ruby, Python, Java, and Node.js through automation, virtualization, and process improvements
• Drive technical excellence by applying lean-agile practices, including simple design, automated testing, and continuous delivery
• Protect sensitive data by implementing strong security and privacy practices
• Conduct security audits and risk analyses to identify issues early
• Plan and deliver remediations, then verify fixes through testing and monitoring
• Choose the right tools, frameworks, languages, and technologies for the job — with a preference for open-source where it fits

What We're Looking For

Minimum qualifications:

• Experience deploying and managing cloud infrastructure in Azure and AWS, including enterprise or government environments
• Proficiency with Terraform and infrastructure as code across AWS and Azure
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across technical and non-technical audiences
• Comfort engaging directly with end users and client stakeholders to understand needs and communicate solutions
• Ability to clearly articulate technical, design, and business tradeoffs when making decisions
• Demonstrated ability to learn, understand, and modernize legacy systems
• Solid understanding of modern software development and the ability to partner closely with software engineers
• Experience building infrastructure intended for handoff to customers or partner teams, including documentation and knowledge transfer
• Ability to manage interconnected systems and ensure availability, reliability, and resiliency in cloud-centric environments
• Ability to enable continuous delivery through automation and CI/CD pipelines
• Knowledge of building secure, compliant systems and defending against common vulnerabilities
• Experience instrumenting systems and configuring observability — monitoring, metrics, alerting, logging, auditability, and compliance
• Ability to standardize deployment processes and improve operational workflows using infrastructure as code
• Ability to work successfully within a professional services environment (e.g., can communicate effectively with clients)
• Passion for creating better public outcomes through great government services
• A mindset and work approach that aligns with Skylight's core values
• Ability to travel for work from time to time

Nice-to-have qualifications:

• Experience flexing into software development tasks as part of a delivery team when needed
• Experience supporting legacy system modernization, including migrations, refactors, and incremental replacement strategies
• Experience with Docker and containerized services, including Kubernetes-based deployments
• Comfort working across multiple cloud platforms and adapting to different infrastructure patterns
• Experience operating in hybrid cloud or on-prem environments
• Familiarity working in highly regulated government environments (FedRAMP, FISMA, etc.)
• Familiarity with healthcare technology and standards (HL7, FHIR, etc.)
• Prior experience working in the civic tech space
• Experience working in a remote team environment

Other Requirements

All work must be conducted within the U.S., excluding U.S. territories. Some federal contracts require U.S. citizenship to be eligible for employment. You must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. now and in the future without sponsorship. As a government contractor, you may be required to obtain a public trust or security clearance. You may be required to complete a company background check successfully. Some of our available roles are on federal contracts that require a degree or additional years of experience as a substitute.

Position Type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Location

This is a fully remote position.

Care Package

Salary: We want to give you the most competitive salary possible. After all, you deserve it! To that end, we use the results of our interview process to determine what salary is most appropriate given your current level of seniority. For a DevOps Engineer at Skylight, the current salary ranges are as follows:

• Associate DevOps Engineer: $90,000–$125,000
• DevOps Engineer I: $120,000–$140,000
• DevOps Engineer II: $135,000–$160,000
• Senior DevOps Engineer: $150,000–$185,000
• Staff DevOps Engineer: $170,000–$203,000
• Principal DevOps Engineer: $180,000–$230,000

Benefits

Your well-being is important to us, so we focus on supporting you in a variety of ways:

• Medical insurance, dental insurance, vision insurance
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Dependent care FSA, healthcare FSA, health savings account
• Dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 10% of your salary with no vesting period
• Flexible paid time-off-policy (generally around 25 days p...