Sr DevOps Architect

Position Summary

Effectual Senior DevOps Architects are responsible for technical leadership of Professional Services projects. They partner with Engagement Managers (EMs) to deliver an exceptional customer and delivery team experience. Effectual DevOps Architects are “Brand Ambassadors” and are expected to demonstrate Effectual’s experience and expertise through the delivery of high-quality, leading-practice solutions to customers. Aligning business technology with an organization’s strategy and goals can often be a complex and overwhelming process without the right tools and expertise.

A Glimpse into the Daily Routine of a Senior DevOps Architect

Effectual is seeking a Senior DevOps Architect to lead DevOps transformation and platform engineering initiatives for enterprise clients. As a technical expert and trusted advisor, you’ll design and implement enterprise-scale CI/CD platforms, container orchestration systems, and cloud automation solutions while mentoring client teams through their DevOps adoption journey.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Design DevOps Platforms

• Architect CI/CD platforms and Kubernetes infrastructure using best practices
• Design automation frameworks, observability strategies, and security integration patterns
• Build enterprise-scale DevOps platforms with multi-tenancy and compliance requirements

Automate & Optimize

• Develop Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform, CloudFormation, and AWS CDK
• Create CI/CD pipelines, automation scripts (Python, Go, Bash), and configuration management
• Optimize infrastructure for reliability, cost efficiency, security, and observability

Enable Client Success

• Provide technical guidance and DevOps mentorship to client engineering teams
• Lead DevOps transformation workshops, knowledge transfer sessions, and incident response
• Troubleshoot complex infrastructure and pipeline challenges; create comprehensive documentation

Qualifications

• 7+ years of continual, prior experience in DevOps architecture
• 7+ years architecting and building AWS infrastructure
• 7+ years of DevOps toolchain experience (e.g., GitHub, GitLab, AWS Code* Suite)
• AWS experience within the past year, with knowledge of primary AWS services (Compute, Storage, Networking, RDS)
• Strong track record of implementing AWS services in a variety of distributed computing environments
• Experience facilitating discussions with senior leadership regarding technical/architectural trade-offs, best practices, and risk mitigation
• Experience leading highly available and fault-tolerant enterprise and web-scale software deployments
• Experience managing data center or cloud operations, including data assurance, monitoring, alerting, and notifications
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically about business, product, and technical challenges
• Strong working knowledge of leading AWS cloud security practices
• Proficient in developing Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g., Terraform, AWS CloudFormation)
• Proficient in coding configuration management tooling (e.g., Ansible, Chef, Puppet)
• Proficient in one or more programming/scripting languages (e.g., Python, Java, Node)
• Demonstrable knowledge of Agile and Waterfall SDLC methodologies
• Ability to work with multiple clients in parallel, with strong attention to detail
• Exceptional communication and time management skills
• Ability to work EST with flexibility for different time zones

Technical Skills

Kubernetes Architecture & Security

• Expert proficiency in architecting secure, scalable Kubernetes and EKS platforms with advanced security, networking, and integration patterns
• Design and enforce comprehensive RBAC, network policies, admission controllers, and guardrails
• Architect and secure complex multi-tenant environments with namespace isolation and CNI strategies
• Architect custom operators, admission webhooks, platform extensions, and service mesh implementations (Istio, Linkerd, Consul Connect)

DevSecOps Integration

• Lead integration of comprehensive security scanning (SAST, DAST, container, IaC) with automated remediation workflows
• Lead implementation of compliance frameworks (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FedRAMP)
• Architect enterprise secret management with rotation, audit, and encryption
• Design comprehensive IAM strategies with least-privilege, service accounts, and OIDC federation
• Implement policy-as-code tools (Open Policy Agent, Falco, Kyverno); partner with security teams to establish DevSecOps culture

Infrastructure as Code

• Expert proficiency in Terraform (module design, state management, workspace strategies, CI/CD integration) and CloudFormation (StackSets, nested stacks, cross-account deployments)
• 5+ years of advanced IaC experience; implement security scanning (Checkov, tfsec, Terrascan) in CI/CD pipelines

CI/CD Pipeline Architecture

• Architect enterprise CI/CD platforms (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) with security, compliance, and scalability
• Architect AWS CodePipeline with cross-account, multi-region deployments; lead GitOps implementations (ArgoCD, Flux) with progressive delivery
• 5+ years of CI/CD architecture with platform engineering focus

Monitoring & Observability

• Expert in architecting enterprise observability platforms: Prometheus (HA, federation, Thanos), Grafana (RBAC, provisioning), ELK/EFK (centralized logging, security, retention)
• Lead APM architecture with Datadog/New Relic (custom metrics, distributed tracing, SLOs); expert in CloudWatch cross-account observability
• Implement SRE practices: SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, and incident response frameworks

Scripting & Automation

• Expert in Python (framework development, complex automation, API development) and Bash/Shell (advanced scripting with error handling and testing)
• Advanced PowerShell for Windows automation and cross-platform scripting; proficient in Go for cloud-native tooling and operators

Required Professional Competencies

• Ability to translate technical concepts for executive audiences
• Ability to build consensus across stakeholders without direct authority
• Strong problem-solving, analytical, and collaboration skills

Required Certifications

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (Current or Expired)

Nice-to-Have Skills and Experience

• Multi-cloud experience (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Compliance framework expertise (PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2)
• AWS CDK, database migration, and modernization experience
• FinOps practices and cost optimization expertise
• Agile/Scrum methodology experience

Nice-to-Have Certifications

• AWS Certified SysOps Administrator – Associate
• AWS Certified Security – Specialty
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
• AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
• HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
• Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKAD) and container orchestration experience (ECS, EKS)