Sr DevOps Engineer

Border States • Fargo, ND

19h

About The Position

The Senior DevOps Engineer is a hands-on technical leader responsible for building and maintaining scalable, secure, and highly available infrastructure and delivery pipelines across cloud environments. This role drives automation, observability, and reliability engineering practices to support business-critical applications and microservices. Working closely with development, security, and operations teams, the Senior DevOps Engineer leads initiatives to streamline deployment processes, optimize system performance, and implement proactive monitoring and incident response strategies. The ideal candidate has deep experience in infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD tooling, cloud platforms (particularly Azure), and a strong commitment to continuous improvement, mentorship, and operational excellence. While not fully strategic, the role significantly influences technical decision-making, platform stability, and the team’s DevOps maturity.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or related STEM field, or equivalent hands-on experience required. Master’s preferred.
• 7+ years of progressive experience in DevOps, site reliability engineering, or related technical roles, with proven leadership in large-scale cloud environments.
• Expert proficiency with Linux administration, kernel tuning, and advanced shell scripting.
• Extensive hands-on experience with Azure cloud platform, including advanced services (AKS, Key Vault, Managed Identities), cloud networking, and security controls.
• Advanced automation skills using Terraform, Helm/Kustomize, GitHub Actions/Azure DevOps, and container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, Docker).
• Robust understanding of modern application architectures, including microservices, serverless, and event-driven designs.
• Experience designing, securing, and scaling distributed systems, with a track record of implementing high-availability and disaster recovery strategies.
• Strong programming capabilities in at least one major language (Python, Go, Ruby, Node.js, or Java preferred).
• Deep knowledge of CI/CD tools, artifact management, monitoring suites (Prometheus, Grafana, Elasticsearch/Opensearch), and cloud cost management platforms.
• Experience leading technical teams, managing project deliverables, and influencing organizational technical direction.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and advisory skills, with ability to interface effectively with stakeholders at all levels.

Nice To Haves

• Master’s preferred.
• Certifications in Azure, Kubernetes, or security disciplines (e.g., AZ-400, CKA, CISSP), preferred.
• Familiarity with SAP ecosystem (ECC, S4HANA, Commerce Cloud) or large-scale ERP integrations, preferred.
• Track record of driving organizational change, optimizing engineering workflows, and delivering complex cloud migration projects, preferred.

Responsibilities

• Implements and manages complex CI/CD pipelines for business-critical applications and microservices, ensuring reliability, traceability, and fast delivery across staging and production environments.
• Supports DevSecOps practices by integrating security and compliance checks into pipelines and automation workflows, contributing to organization-wide standards.
• Designs and implements scalable cloud solutions using Azure services (AKS, Key Vault, Storage Accounts, etc.) and collaborating with cross-functional teams to integrate new technologies.
• Leads automation initiatives for infrastructure provisioning, configuration management, and monitoring using tools like Terraform, Helm/Kustomize, and scripting (bash, Python, PowerShell).
• Establishes and manages observability systems including logging, telemetry, and alerting to ensure platform health and support root cause analysis.
• Acts as technical lead during high-impact incidents, driving response efforts, performing post-mortems, and leading remediation workstreams.
• Contributes to architecture reviews, recommending secure and cost-efficient solutions and participating in technical decision-making.
• Authors and maintains technical documentation, including runbooks, standards, disaster recovery plans, and best practices.
• Mentors DevOps engineers and collaborates with development teams, fostering a culture of ownership, learning, and operational excellence.
• Monitors cloud usage and performance, identifying optimization opportunities to reduce cost and improve efficiency.
• Supports compliance and security practices, collaborating with InfoSec to meet organizational and regulatory requirements.
• Creates and maintains Dockerfiles and Azure pipelines for deployments, security scans, and automation tasks in support of development teams.
• Coordinates with developers to improve release processes, ensuring reliable, repeatable software delivery.
• Ensures business continuity and disaster recovery documentation remains up to date as it relates to the functional area(s).
• Responds to IT Helpdesk incidents where appropriate, and performs off-hours support, as necessary.
• Provides feedback to management to ensure project workload is appropriate across the team.
• Performs other duties as assigned by manager or designate.

Benefits

• Health, Dental and Vision Benefits
• Accident, Critical Illness, Hospital Indemnity
• FSA & HSA
• Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
• Disability Benefits
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Life Insurance
• Employee Assistance Program
• Paid Holidays
• Paid Volunteer Time
• Personal Leave time and more!
• Border States provides bonuses to their employee-owners upon the achievement of branch and company goals.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees