DevOps Lead

Strategic HR Client Job Openings • Cincinnati, OH

16d • Hybrid

About The Position

As our DevOps Lead, you’ll work at the intersection of architecture, automation, and operations. You’ll partner with an EMEA DevOps team member to make Level 2–4 support predictable and scalable, while leading the next wave of platform initiatives—containerization, deployment-tool POCs, and clear architectural direction that gets implemented (not parked).
What you’ll build: automated CI/CD with no manual deploys, reproducible IaC-driven environments, production-grade Kubernetes operations, actionable observability (metrics/logs/traces), and SOC 2-ready security practices baked into the workflow.
Contract-to-hire: This role starts as a 6‑month contract with the opportunity to convert to full‑time.

Requirements

• DevOps experience owning production delivery and operations (you’re accountable for outcomes, not just tickets).
• CI/CD automation end-to-end (no manual deploys) with disciplined versioning and releases.
• Containers/Kubernetes in production (debugging, scaling, reliability).
• IaC + env management (reproducible environments, parity, on-demand spin-up, config & secrets control).
• Observability: metrics + logs + traces you can act on.
• Security: secrets management, SAST/DAST, and access control (SOC 2–ready).
• Strong Git workflows and a bias toward automation.
• Comfortable collaborating across time zones (incl. EMEA) and leading incident response through root cause.

Nice To Haves

• SRE practices (SLOs/SLIs, error budgets), plus reliability tooling.
• Cost optimization and performance testing integrated into delivery.
• Platform/architecture: internal developer platform “golden paths,” multi-region/HA, advanced networking (ingress/service mesh), and AI-assisted ops.

Responsibilities

• Build and run fully automated CI/CD (no manual deploys), with consistent versioning and release governance aligned to the Opto-parent model.
• Partner across time zones with EMEA to make Level 2–4 support reliable—runbooks, on-call readiness, incident response, and root-cause follow-through.
• Lead containerization and Kubernetes operations with hands-on capability (debugging, scaling, resilience patterns).
• Standardize IaC and environment management: reproducible environments, parity across dev/test/prod, on-demand spin-up, and tight config/secrets control.
• Ship actionable observability (metrics, logs, traces) and drive improvements in uptime and mean time to recovery.
• Run POCs for deployment and platform tooling, translate learnings into clear standards, and ensure smooth flowdown into implementation.
• Bake in security-by-default: secrets management, SAST/DAST, and access controls supporting SOC 2 readiness.
• Improve developer experience through internal platform patterns and “golden paths,” plus mentoring and pragmatic standards.

Benefits

• High ownership, high impact: you’ll set standards and build the platform other engineers ship on.
• Modernization work: containerization, automation, observability, and security improvements that matter in production.
• Cross-regional collaboration: partner closely with our EMEA DevOps teammate to build repeatable operations.
• Hybrid flexibility: onsite Mon-Wed, remote Thu-Fri.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 1-10 employees