Principal DevOps Engineer (Remote)

$160,000 - $180,000/Yr

Patterson Companies - Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN

Full-time - Senior

Remote - Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN

Merchant Wholesalers, Durable Goods

About the position

The Principle DevOps Engineer supports web and digital based software applications or web-based Cloud software applications, supporting services, and hosting platforms. The Principle DevOps Engineer focuses on application life cycle management tools and processes and assists with process workflows and improvements with system engineers, software engineers, security analysts, and technical architects. This position is also responsible for environment and release management and focuses on continuously improving the quality, scalability and speed to market of the supported software.

Responsibilities

• Mentor a team of DevOps engineers, providing technical guidance and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation.
• Shape and implement the long-term DevOps strategy for the organization.
• Develop and manage infrastructure automation using Terraform.
• Oversee cloud infrastructure, hosted in Azure ensuring optimal cost management, security, and scalability.
• Design and implement robust monitoring, logging, and alerting systems.
• Ensure proactive issue identification and resolution through observability.
• Automate repetitive tasks to improve system reliability, performance, and operational efficiency.
• Continuously evaluate processes and tools to identify areas for improvement.
• Partner closely with software engineers, IT operations, and security teams to ensure alignment on goals, infrastructure requirements, and best practices.
• Help define and enforce best practices for development and deployment.
• Collaborate with security teams to ensure that all DevOps processes adhere to security best practices and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Implement disaster recovery and business continuity plans for critical systems.
• Oversee cloud infrastructure (Azure) and ensure network architecture is robust, secure, and optimized for performance.
• Manage and optimize Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) setups, DNS, load balancing, and other critical network components.
• Collaborate with network teams to design and implement high-performance networking solutions, including routing, and firewall policies.
• Troubleshoot and optimize network connectivity and performance issues.
• Design, develop, and manage Terraform modules for provisioning and managing infrastructure resources in a consistent and automated way.
• Serve as the key contact for assigned applications and troubleshoot complex system problems in partnership with the use/client community, internal, and vendor IT staff.
• Deploy, manage, automate and scale cloud computing services to support product development teams.
• Build automation tools to support the software development and infrastructure operations teams.
• Work with technical teams to resolve issues, install, and test upgrades and customizations.
• Monitor assigned systems and applications performance to maintain agreed to performance metrics.
• Take proactive steps to improve performance when necessary.
• Escalate issues to management.
• Participate in technical on-call services as needed to ensure timely and high-quality incident resolution.
• Use continuous deployment tools to provide a seamless deployment process to all environments.
• Define changes to the application environments in Azure and guide Engineers in the setup/changes and implementation of new technology solutions.
• Assist in documentation of application systems, process flows, and support processes.
• Participate in meetings to review processes and identify requirements and/or needs.
• Define needs by documenting processes; includes research, planning and writing supporting documentation.
• Communicate effectively with management to enhance their understanding of the opportunities and limitations of information systems.
• Stay current with industry trends in cloud, networking, and DevOps.
• Research and evaluate emerging technologies to optimize infrastructure and network performance.

Requirements

• Bachelor or Associate degree in Computer Science, Management Information Sciences or area of functional responsibility preferred, or equivalent years of industry work experience.
• At least 9+ years of DevOps experience.
• Strong experience in Terraform for Infrastructure as Code (IaC), including creating reusable modules, managing state files, and integrating with cloud providers (Azure).
• Strong expertise in managing and optimizing Azure cloud infrastructure with a focus on network services (e.g., VPC, subnetting, load balancing, security groups, etc.).
• Knowledge of all aspects of application development and project life cycles.
• Design and development experience with engineering software design tools.
• Some Scripting experience required with strong focus on PowerShell.
• Proficiency with version control systems e.g. git, SVN, CVS.
• Proficiency with SQL and databases.
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
• Experience in designing and implementing a continuous integration pipeline (CICD).
• Strong product experience from inception to customer delivery.
• Strong customer service orientation.
• Ability to troubleshoot issues in Stage and Production environments.
• Consistent, positive attitude and respect for high quality standards.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills with ability to effectively communicate at multiple levels in the organization.
• Ability to present ideas in business-friendly and user-friendly language.
• Ability to absorb new ideas and concepts quickly.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.
• Experience working in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
• Ability to conduct research into issues as required.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience working in an agile development environment.
• Familiar with Cloud based web application.
• Cloud certifications (Azure DevOps Engineer Expert).
• Proficiency in Docker and Kubernetes, with hands-on experience in deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications in cloud.
• Familiarity with Azure DevOps and ServiceNow and project tracking systems.
• Strong understanding of the organization's goals and objectives.

Benefits

• Remote work culture with well-established virtual collaboration practices.
• Equal opportunities for career advancement and professional growth, regardless of physical location.
• Periodic travel to corporate sites required (Quarterly or so).
• Periodic on call rotations and available outside of normal business hours on evenings and weekends during critical production release or issue escalation periods.