About the role

What will you do at ASCENDING?

Required U.S. Citizenship / No clearance needed / 100% remote within the US Staff Site Reliability Engineer / Cloud SME Location: 100% remote in the continental US Type: Long-term contract (3+ years) Role Summary As the Staff SRE/Cloud SME, you will be a critical technical leader driving the rearchitecting of our existing monolithic system into a resilient, cloud-native architecture.

This role requires deep expertise across multiple cloud platforms (Azure and AWS) and container orchestration (Kubernetes) to ensure the next-generation platform meets the highest standards of scalability, reliability, and security.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & Transformation Leadership * Lead the technical rearchitecting efforts, transforming a large-scale monolithic system into a modern microservices-based, cloud-native application.
* Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Engineering, Architecture, Product) to define and implement the new system architecture using domain-driven design (DDD) principles.
* Conduct technology evaluations and provide recommendations for new tools, frameworks, and cloud services to enhance our infrastructure.
Reliability Engineering & Cloud Operations * Utilize Kubernetes (K8S) for container orchestration and management, ensuring extreme scalability, reliability, and high availability of the system.
* Implement robust, highly resilient, and highly available components for the system.
* Develop and implement comprehensive monitoring, logging, and alerting mechanisms to ensure optimal system performance and availability.
* Drive the adoption of DevOps principles and practices throughout the software development lifecycle, ensuring seamless integration and continuous deployment processes.
Technical Expertise & Mentorship * Stay up-to-date with emerging technologies, frameworks, and industry trends related to systems and cloud computing.
* Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior team members, fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional growth.
Required Qualifications * Cloud Platforms: 7+ years of experience with cloud computing platforms.
Strong multi-cloud expertise required with AWS and Azure.
* Cloud-Native Transformation: 7+ years of experience in rearchitecting large-scale monolithic applications to cloud-native architectures.
* Container Orchestration: Strong expertise in Kubernetes (K8S) is required, including hands-on experience with both AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) and EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service).
* Networking: Strong experience with Cloud Networking, with the ability to design and resolve complex cloud networking architecture problems.
* IaC: Expert knowledge of Terraform for infrastructure-as-code deployment and management.
* Security: Must possess strong knowledge of security best practices for containers and Kubernetes clusters.
* Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
* Bonus Knowledge: Knowledge of load balancing algorithms.
Thanks for applying!

Which skills does this role require?

Cloud ComputingAWSAzureKubernetesContainer OrchestrationMicroservicesDevOpsInfrastructure-as-CodeTerraformCloud NetworkingSecurity Best PracticesMonitoringLoggingAlertingTechnical LeadershipMentorshipDomain-Driven DesignCloud ServicesTechnology EvaluationsHigh AvailabilityScalabilityReliabilityContinuous DeploymentEmerging TechnologiesFrameworksIndustry Trends

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