An opportunity has emerged in our network for a Cloud Automation Engineer to join the IT Engineering department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst). This is a full-time staff position offering the opportunity for a remote work schedule. The role focuses on supporting and continually improving technology services for the entire campus community, including executives, faculty, and staff.

This engineer will be crucial in modernizing UMass IT by implementing, monitoring, and maintaining cloud computing systems across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments (e.g., Azure, AWS), with a strong emphasis on automation and containerization.

Key Responsibilities and Technical Focus

This role requires expertise in cloud migration, automation, container orchestration, and ensuring the high availability and security of complex distributed systems.

• Cloud Migration & Strategy: Research, propose, and implement strategies for the automation, migration, and consolidation of complex distributed systems, including converting physical and virtual machines to services provided by cloud vendors (Azure, AWS).
• Containerization & Orchestration: Develops, implements, and manages containerized on-prem and cloud infrastructure solutions using Docker and Kubernetes, ensuring high availability, scalability, and security across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
• CI/CD Integration: Collaborates with cross-functional teams to integrate container orchestration into CI/CD pipelines and optimize deployment workflows using build and orchestration tools such as Jenkins and Terraform.
• Automation & Maintenance: Automates the provisioning, configuration, and maintenance of new and existing software/services. This includes automating tasks in multiple environments (test, staging, production) and developing tools for automation and integration of central IT services.
• Operations & Monitoring: Monitors system and code performance, tunes system resources, responds to alerts and customer-reported issues, and participates in an off-hours on-call rotation.

Required Experience and Qualifications

The successful candidate will be a highly analytical and organized professional with substantial experience in cloud orchestration and system scripting.

• Experience: 5 years of related professional experience with a Bachelor’s degree (or 7 years with an Associate’s degree).
• Cloud Orchestration: 3 years providing Cloud orchestration and coding in a large complex environment.
• Tooling Expertise: Experience with automation products such as Jenkins, Terraform, Ansible, or GIT.
• Scripting: Knowledge and experience with system scripting using technologies such as Python and Bash.
• Infrastructure: Knowledge and experience working with virtualization environments (e.g., VMWare) and experience in UNIX/Linux (including TCP/IP and Basic Networking).
• Best Practices: Knowledge and experience with industry-standard cloud best practices as they relate to deployment, provisioning, and pipelining.

Preferred Qualifications include experience and certification with AWS or Azure, experience with centralized automated configuration management for Linux (such as Puppet or Ansible), and experience with database management systems (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server).

Location and Schedule Details

• Work Schedule: Monday – Friday, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm.
• Remote Opportunity: This position offers the opportunity for a remote work schedule.
• Availability: Required to work some nights and weekends, and participate in off-hours on-call rotation.