Cloud Engineer

Skyward IT SolutionsRockville, MD
$115,000 - $145,000Hybrid

About The Position

We are Skyward, a people-centered business with a desire to serve others, driven by a love for people, improvement, and human advancement through information technology. We are diverse and unified, creative and collaborative, with a collection of complementary talents. Our civic tech mission is fueled by a torrent of energy, and we stand by our values of Integrity, Compassion, Inquisitiveness, Unconventionality, and Authenticity. We are looking for a Cloud Engineer who is passionate about building secure, scalable, and cost-effective cloud environments. The ideal candidate will be motivated to learn from others, embrace mistakes as learning opportunities, and contribute to a future-looking, growth-oriented team focused on modernizing government services with cutting-edge technology. This role offers the opportunity to work in a collaborative environment that erases the line between work and life, while making government work exciting.

Requirements

  • 3-5 years of hands-on AWS experience, including building and running real environments.
  • Solid comfort with core AWS services: compute, networking (VPC), IAM, storage, and managed databases.
  • Security-first mindset and familiarity with cloud-native security and compliance tooling (Security Hub, Config, Audit Manager, or similar).
  • Automation skills, including Python, Bash, and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible).
  • An eye for cost optimization.
  • A strong desire to understand the root cause of issues.
  • A sense of humor and a calm demeanor under pressure.

Nice To Haves

  • Experience hosting AI/ML or LLM workloads in the cloud (SageMaker, GPU instances, or self-hosted open-source models).
  • AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, SysOps, or Security Specialty).
  • Experience in federal or civic-tech.
  • Experience operating within a FISMA boundary, navigating an ATO, or surviving a cATO effort.

Responsibilities

  • Design, deploy, and operate secure, scalable AWS environments (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, Aurora, and Neptune) to support system performance and data integrity.
  • Build cloud environments adhering to the AWS Well-Architected Framework, balancing performance, reliability, security, and cost.
  • Establish the cloud environment for AI, hosting open-source LLMs and ML workloads (e.g., SageMaker, Glue, DataBrew) within the CMS AWS account.
  • Implement high availability, disaster recovery, and COOP continuity to meet SLAs.
  • Configure AWS Security Hub, Config, and Audit Manager for continuous compliance within a FISMA Moderate boundary aligned to RMF, ARS, and IS2P2.
  • Build isolated, segregated, quota-managed spaces for different teams to experiment with AI.
  • Design and maintain least-privilege IAM and role-based access controls, conducting regular access reviews and audits.
  • Set baselines, configure monitoring and alerting, and visualize system health for the team.
  • Model cloud costs, identify savings using tools like AWS Trusted Advisor, and manage the financial aspects of the AI workspace.

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, vision insurance (fully paid for employees)
  • 15 days of paid leave
  • 7 days of sick leave
  • 2 days bereavement leave
  • 11 paid Federal holidays
  • Up to 40 hours for jury duty
  • 401K with 4% employer contribution (no vesting period)
  • Up to 4 weeks of paid paternity and maternity leave
  • Company provided laptop
  • $5,000 per year for professional development
  • $600 per year for technical supplies and equipment
  • $2,000 referral bonus
  • Life and disability insurance
  • HSA and FSA
  • Legal Shield and ID Shield
  • Voluntary Benefits
  • Opportunity to work in a collaborative, motivated team focused on modernizing government services with cutting-edge technology and innovative solutions.
  • Flexible working hours
  • Remote opportunities
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