Site Reliability Engineer

National Student Clearinghouse•Herndon, VA

19d•Remote

About The Position

By joining the National Student Clearinghouse, you can be sure that the work you do now will help shape the future of education and the workforce in the U.S. As the trusted source for higher education data since 1993, the Clearinghouse is the leading provider of transcript and data exchange services, automated enrollment and degree verifications, learner insights and research, and compliance solutions for schools, businesses, and learners nationwide. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Clearinghouse works with nearly 3,600 postsecondary institutions to meet their compliance needs and with thousands of high schools and districts to provide continuing collegiate enrollment, progression, and completion statistics about their alumni. In addition, the Research Center publications inform policymakers and business leaders about student educational pathways. Using our unique combination of data, analytics, and software to drive our mission, security and privacy is paramount. Join us as we continue to invest in our talent and new advanced technologies to unlock the power of data on behalf of all learners. About the Role: The Site Reliability Engineer role exists to ensure the reliability, scalability, and performance of an organizations systems and services. This position bridges software engineering and IT operations, applying automation, monitoring, and proactive incident management to maintain highly available and resilient platforms. SREs design and implement solutions that reduce operational toil, improve system efficiency, and enable development teams to deliver features quickly without compromising stability. By focusing on service availability, performance optimization, and continuous improvement, the SRE function is critical to sustaining customer trust and supporting business growth. This position operates with a high degree of autonomy, making independent decisions on system reliability, performance optimization, and incident response within established service-level objectives. The role requires discretion in prioritizing tasks, implementing automation, and resolving complex technical issues to maintain system stability and meet business continuity goals. Currently, this is a remote-first position, and this position may be required to periodically work on-site at our office and the frequency would depend on the department/division's requirements. Therefore, candidates must either reside within a reasonable distance to commute to our office or be willing to travel to our office in Herndon, when required.

Requirements

Bachelors degree in Computer Science, IT or related field. A combination of education and experience including military service will also be considered.
5 years in Site Reliability Engineering, DevOps, or a related role, with demonstrated expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), automation, and system monitoring.
Operating and supporting production services in cloud environments (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
Implementing and managing CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitLab or equivalent) and progressive delivery strategies (blue/green, canary, feature flags).
Managing containerized environments using Docker and Kubernetes.
Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation for automated provisioning.
Automation scripting with Python, Bash, or PowerShell, including configuration baseline enforcement and drift detection.
Observability and monitoring (metrics, logs, traces) and actionable alerting; hands-on experience with tools like Datadog or similar.
Proven ability to lead incident management, perform root-cause analysis, and conduct blameless post-incident reviews.
Must live within a commutable distance to Herndon, VA or in one of the Clearinghouse's approved States for hiring purposes . Refer to our HR Policies Page, located on our Careers site at https://www.studentclearinghouse.org/careers/human-resource-policies/ , for more details.
Must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis.
We do not intend to sponsor external applicants for work visas, and may consider sponsorship only if no qualified candidates can be found who are authorized to work without sponsorship.
Must be at least 18 years old.

Nice To Haves

AWS Certified DevOps Engineer or equivalent certification (e.g., Azure DevOps Engineer Expert, Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer).
Proven proficiency in deploying and managing scalable infrastructure on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Strong scripting and programming skills in Python, Bash, or Go, with experience automating operational tasks and building CI/CD pipelines.
Hands-on experience with system health and performance monitoring tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK stack; prior experience with Datadog is strongly preferred.
Expertise in Git-based workflows and CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions.
Demonstrated ability to manage on-call rotations, perform root cause analysis, and lead post-mortem processes.
Skilled in diagnosing complex system issues quickly and effectively.

Responsibilities

Demonstrate the Clearinghouse's core competencies: Customer Focus, Optimizes Work Processes, Collaborates, Communicates Effectively, and Be Open and Authentic.
Reliability Engineering & SLOs: Define SLIs/SLOs and manage error budgets; drive reliability reviews and continuous improvement to protect customer experience.
Observability & Monitoring: Build and operate end-to-end observability (metrics, traces, logs, synthetics, dashboards, alerting), leveraging tools such as Datadog; tune alerts for actionability and reduce noise.
Incident Management: Participate in and help coordinate incident response and on-call rotations; lead blameless post-incident reviews, root-cause analysis, and corrective action tracking.
Automation & CI/CD: Partner with engineering to automate build, test, deploy, and release processes (e.g., GitLab CI) and promote progressive delivery, change safety, and rollback strategies.
Infrastructure as Code & Cloud: Provision and manage cloud infrastructure with Terraform/CloudFormation on AWS/Azure/GCP; enforce configuration baselines and drift detection.
Containers & Orchestration: Operate containerized workloads at scale (Kubernetes, Helm); release strategies (blue/green, canary).
Performance & Capacity: Conduct performance testing and tuning; lead capacity planning and cost-aware scaling.
Security & Compliance: Embed security into pipelines and environments (e.g., IAM guardrails, policy-as-code, audit logging, vulnerability management, Wiz exposure where applicable) in partnership with DevSecOps.
Runbooks & Documentation: Create and maintain runbooks, operational SOPs, and service catalogs; promote knowledge sharing and operational readiness across teams.
Collaboration: Work across engineering, infrastructure, devsecops, security, and product to deliver reliable, scalable services; communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Continuous Improvement: Identify toil, propose experiments (e.g., chaos testing, game days), and automate repetitive operations to improve MTTR and deployment safety (DORA metrics awareness).
Perform other duties as required.
Position may be required to perform other duties as required.
These essential functions are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the job.
Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform these essential functions.

Benefits

The National Student Clearinghouse provides a robust benefit program designed to help meet the needs of each employee and their family, both now and in the future.
We offer comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance, as well as life and disability insurance benefits, for employees and their qualified dependents.
Health care, dependent care, and limited purpose flexible spending accounts, as well as a health savings account with annual employer contributions of $300 for employees and $600 for employees who are enrolled with their spouse and/or dependents, voluntary supplemental health plans for Accident and Hospital Indemnity coverage, and infertility coverage are options available for employees to set aside pre-taxed dollars for certain qualifying expenses.
We offer a very generous 401k matching contribution program with the opportunity to defer pre-tax and Roth contributions, as well as catch-up contributions for those who are eligible!
We are proud to offer a competitive paid leave program consisting of vacation, sick, and personal time, as well as paid holidays, up to 3 weeks of paid parental leave during a 12-month period, and up to 5 days of paid military leave per calendar year.
Vacation time will accrue based on length of service, and new full-time hires can accrue up to 13 days of vacation and up to 10 days of sick time per year.
On an annual basis, new employees may use up to 32 hours of accrued sick time as personal time.
Additionally, the Clearinghouse observes at least 15 paid holidays per year, including company year-end close between Christmas and New Years Holidays.
Another perk is that employees have the option to get reimbursed for basic wholesale company and roadside assistance memberships (e.g., Costco and AAA) and to request a buy back on portions of unused accrued vacation based on tenure and certain other qualifications.
Employees can further their education and professional development by using our Employee Education Assistance Program, which establishes reimbursement for qualified education expenses upon successful completion of the program, and leveraging the enterprise-wide LinkedIn Learning subscription.
There are additional employee benefits too, including but not limited to, mental health with up to eight free therapy sessions for employees and their family members and well-being reward benefits.
With the Clearinghouse being an eligible 501(3)(c) nonprofit organization, employees are eligible for service credit towards the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF).