Senior Azure Cloud Engineer (Remote)

Xcel Engineering - Oak Ridge, TN

Full-time - Senior

Remote - Oak Ridge, TN

Administrative and Support Services

About the position

Xcel Engineering is seeking a qualified Senior Cloud Engineer to join the Digital Platform Services Group at a leading research lab in East Tennessee. This remote position requires a professional who can work collaboratively with the engineering team to identify and implement optimized cloud-based solutions that align with the company's goals. The Senior Cloud Engineer will be responsible for defining and documenting best practices and strategies for application deployment and infrastructure maintenance, ensuring that the applications perform optimally, maintain high uptime, and scale effectively. The role also involves providing guidance and mentorship to development teams to enhance their cloud competencies, while adhering to company and Federal security guidelines in managing cloud environments. In the realm of Cloud Operations Management, the Senior Cloud Engineer will provide technical expertise across various cloud service categories, including PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS. The engineer will design, build, maintain, document, and automate technical processes and operations using tools such as VMWare, vCenter, vSphere, and Azure Virtual Machine. A critical aspect of this role is to implement configuration and deployment automation to improve the functionality, availability, and manageability of enterprise cloud offerings. Additionally, the engineer will design, implement, and test disaster recovery and business continuity architecture, while monitoring and maintaining multiple environments based on client requirements. The position also emphasizes Continuous Improvement, where the Senior Cloud Engineer will contribute to enhancing software and systems engineering practices to create a streamlined IT environment. Excellent communication skills are essential, as the engineer will need to demonstrate strong interpersonal, written, and presentation abilities to interact effectively with all levels of internal and external partners. The role requires cultivating positive relationships with industry authorities, solving incidents, identifying root causes, and implementing preventive measures. Educating teams on new cloud-based initiatives and providing necessary training will also be part of the responsibilities. The ideal candidate will possess exceptional problem-solving skills, enabling them to proactively address issues before they impact business productivity.

Responsibilities

• Identify and implement optimized cloud-based solutions for the company.
• Define and record best practices and strategies regarding application deployment and infrastructure maintenance.
• Provide guidance, thought leadership, and mentorship to development teams to build cloud competencies.
• Ensure application performance, uptime, and scale, maintaining high standards of code quality and thoughtful design.
• Manage cloud environments in accordance with company and Federal security guidelines.
• Provide technical expertise in cloud service categories such as PaaS/SaaS/IaaS.
• Design, build, maintain, document, and automate technical processes and operations using VMWare, vCenter, vSphere, Azure Virtual Machine.
• Implement configuration and deployment automation to improve functionality, availability, and manageability of enterprise cloud offerings.
• Design, implement, and test disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity architecture.
• Monitor and maintain multiple environments based on client requirements.
• Provide continuously improving sets of software and systems engineering practices for a streamlined IT environment.
• Demonstrate excellent interpersonal, written, presentation, leadership, collaboration, facilitation and negotiation skills.
• Cultivate positive relationships with industry authorities.
• Solve incidents, identify root cause, fix, and document problems, and implement preventive measures.
• Educate teams on the implementation of new cloud-based initiatives, providing associated training as required.

Requirements

• A BS in business, computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system analysis, or a related field of study.
• Eight (8) or more years of experience in cloud computing technologies.
• Experience with Azure Cloud.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (firewalls, load balancers, DNS, DHCP) and various virtualization technologies, including VMWare vCenter and vSphere.
• Experience in scripting languages such as Terraform, PowerShell, CloudFormation, Ansible Shell Scripting, Python, Ruby, PERL Scripting.

Nice-to-haves

• An advanced degree in business, computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system analysis, or a related field of study.
• Seven (7) or more years of experience in cloud computing technologies.
• Azure certifications.
• Experience in database architecture, ETL, business intelligence, big data, machine learning, advanced analytics.
• Understanding of authentication and authorization, and both identity and access management.
• Familiarity with deployments in a hybrid cloud environment including data challenges with solution deployment across multiple clouds.
• Familiarity with Azure Open AI.
• Ability to work on challenging issues independently or in a collaborative environment.
• Ability to present ideas in user-friendly language.