Cloud Engineer

Skyward IT Solutions•Rockville, MD

6d•$115,000 - $145,000•Hybrid

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