Senior DevOps Engineer (Contractor)

Senior DevOps Engineer (Contractor)

Location: Remote (LATAM only)

Engagement: Contractor

Experience: Senior (7+ years)

Timezone: Must overlap with US working hours

Role Summary

We are hiring a Senior DevOps Engineer (Contractor) to own and evolve our cloud infrastructure and deployment pipelines on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

This is a hands-on senior IC role with responsibility for designing, operating, troubleshooting, and migrating infrastructure toward infrastructure-as-code (IaC). You will work closely with backend and platform engineers deploying Java, Kotlin, and Python services on Kubernetes (GKE).

This role is outcome-driven and requires strong technical judgment, independence, and clear communication.

AI-First Infrastructure Engineering

We are intentionally building an AI-assisted engineering organization. AI tools are part of the daily workflow.

What this means in practice:

• Daily use of tools like Claude (Opus), Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot

• AI-assisted generation of Terraform / OpenTofu, Helm charts, Kubernetes manifests, and automation scripts

• AI-assisted log analysis, troubleshooting, and observability improvements

• AI-assisted documentation, runbooks, and post-mortems

You are responsible for reviewing, validating, and securing all AI-generated output. Speed matters, but correctness and security matter more.

This role is not a fit for engineers who are resistant to AI-assisted workflows.

Key Responsibilities

Infrastructure & Cloud Operations

• Design, operate, and maintain production infrastructure on GCP

• Manage and optimize GKE (Kubernetes) clusters, workloads, and networking

• Administer Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL) and Redis

• Own IAM roles, service accounts, and least-privilege access

• Manage DNS using OctoDNS across Google DNS and Cloudflare

• Ensure infrastructure security, scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

• Lead migration from bash-based provisioning to Terraform / OpenTofu

• Introduce and maintain Helm charts for Kubernetes deployments

• Eliminate click-ops through declarative, version-controlled infrastructure

• Review and improve Kubernetes manifests and deployment practices

CI/CD & Deployment

• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines using:

  • Google Cloud Build

  • GitHub Actions

• Support automated builds, testing, and deployments for Java/Kotlin/Python services

• Improve deployment safety through rollout strategies, health checks, and rollback mechanisms

Monitoring & Incident Response

• Configure monitoring and alerting using:

  • Google Operations (Cloud Monitoring & Logging)

  • New Relic

  • UptimeRobot

• Act as an escalation point for production incidents

• Diagnose complex system issues using logs, metrics, and traces

• Improve observability and reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR)

Security & Secrets

• Manage secrets using Google Secret Manager, GKE Secrets, and Keeper

• Enforce secure configuration and credential rotation

• Partner with engineering to ensure secure runtime and deployment patterns

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in DevOps, SRE, or Cloud Infrastructure roles

• Strong hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform

• Deep production experience with Kubernetes (GKE preferred)

• Strong Linux and bash fundamentals

• Production experience with Terraform or OpenTofu

• Experience creating and maintaining Helm charts

• Experience with Cloud Build and/or GitHub Actions

• Strong troubleshooting skills in distributed systems

• Experience with PostgreSQL and Redis

• Solid understanding of IAM, DNS, networking, and cloud security

Nice to Have

• Multi-environment Kubernetes setups (dev/staging/prod)

• Experience with deployment strategies (blue/green, canary, rolling)

• GCP cost optimization experience

• Experience setting DevOps standards or mentoring engineers

What Success Looks Like

• Infrastructure is reproducible, auditable, and managed via code

• CI/CD pipelines are reliable, fast, and secure

• Production incidents are diagnosable and resolved quickly

• Manual operations steadily disappear in favor of automation

• Engineering teams can deploy independently and safely

Contractor & Location Notes

• This is a contractor role, not full-time employment

• Candidates must be based in LATAM

• Senior-level ownership and communication are expected

• Consistent overlap with US time zones is required