Lead DevOps Engineer (AWS + Terraform + GitHub Actions)

Perficient•Austin, TX

2d•$93,008 - $1,650,000•Hybrid

About The Position

As a Lead Technical Consultant, you will participate in all aspects of the software development lifecycle, including estimating, technical design, implementation, documentation, testing, deployment, and support of applications developed for our clients. Working in a team environment, you will collaborate with solution architects and developers on the interpretation and translation of wireframes and creative designs into functional requirements, and subsequently into technical design. Perficient is a quickly-growing, global digital consulting leader, transforming the world's largest enterprises and biggest brands. You'll work with the latest technologies, expand your skills, and become part of our global community of talented, diverse, and knowledgeable colleagues.

Requirements

10+ years in DevOps/SRE/Platform Engineering, including leadership or technical lead experience.
Expertise in AWS (core networking, compute, storage, databases, IAM).
Strong Terraform experience: modules, state management, versioning, code reviews, and policy as code (e.g., Sentinel/OPA).
Hands-on GitHub Actions experience: multi-environment workflows, reusable actions, environment protection rules, artifact handling.
Proficient in Linux, shell scripting, and at least one language (Python, Go, or Node.js) for tooling/automation.
Deep understanding of networking, security, and reliability (VPC, subnets, routing, SGs/NACLs, TLS, DNS, autoscaling).
Experience with containers (Docker) and orchestration (ECS or EKS).
Proven track record in monitoring/observability, incident response, and root cause analysis.
Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
Demonstrated ability to leverage AI tools to enhance productivity, streamline workflows, and support data-informed task execution.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with AI-enhanced platforms is a plus.
Production experience with EKS, cluster add-ons (CoreDNS, kube-proxy), and IaC for Kubernetes (Helm, ArgoCD).
Policy as Code, governance, and guardrails (AWS Organizations, SCPs, Config, Control Tower).
Cost management (Cost Explorer, Budgets, anomaly detection, chargeback/showback).
Zero-downtime deployments, blue/green/canary strategies.
Service Mesh (AWS App Mesh/Istio), feature flags, and progressive delivery.
Multi-account/multi-region architecture and Landing Zone patterns.
Experience with serverless (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB) and event-driven systems.

Responsibilities

Design and Implement CI/CD Pipelines: Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Provision and manage AWS infrastructure using Terraform (modules, workspaces, remote state) and CloudFormation where applicable.
AWS Architecture Design: Design scalable, secure, and cost-optimized architectures leveraging AWS services (EC2, S3, RDS, VPC, ALB/NLB, Route 53, IAM).
System Monitoring and Logging: Implement observability using Amazon CloudWatch, CloudWatch Logs, metrics/alarms, AWS X-Ray, and centralized logging patterns.
Security and Compliance: Enforce AWS security best practices: IAM least privilege, Secrets Manager/Parameter Store, KMS, encryption in transit/at rest, patching, and guardrails.
Automation of Operational Tasks: Automate deployments, scaling, backups, and maintenance using AWS Lambda, Step Functions, EventBridge, and SSM Automation.
Collaboration with Development Teams: Partner with engineering teams to integrate DevOps practices, improve build/test quality, and streamline release management.
Performance & Cost Optimization: Tune infrastructure for performance and cost (Auto Scaling, Graviton, instance sizing, reserved/savings plans, caching via ElastiCache/CloudFront).
Disaster Recovery & Backup: Design DR strategies and AWS Backup policies, cross-region replication, and RTO/RPO targets for critical workloads.
Containerization & Orchestration: Build and operate workloads on Amazon ECS or EKS, including cluster scaling, networking, and image lifecycle (ECR).
Configuration Management: Standardize environments using AWS Systems Manager (Parameters, Patch Manager), and environment baselines.
Incident Response & Reliability: Lead incident management, root cause analysis, and reliability engineering to reduce MTTR and improve SLAs/SLOs.
Documentation & Knowledge Sharing: Document architectures, Terraform modules, GitHub Actions workflows, runbooks, and operational playbooks.
Continuous Improvement: Evaluate and adopt new AWS services/features, Terraform enhancements, and CI/CD patterns to elevate platform maturity.
Mentorship & Leadership: Coach engineers, drive DevOps culture, set standards, and influence roadmap priorities across teams.