Cloud Engineer

Title: Cloud Engineer

Location: Chicago, IL (in-office hybrid)

Our client is seeking a Cloud Engineer who will serve as a key technical contributor, building and evolving their cloud infrastructure. This role is central to implementing a resilient cloud environment essential for powering their high-stakes trading business. You will work closely with the Lead Cloud Engineer to execute on architectural goals, collaborating across Product, Engineering, Security, and Risk to enable high-performance applications. You are a hands-on builder who ensures their systems are scalable, secure, and highly observable.

1. Build and Manage

• Implement and Maintain: Execute the development of a secure, scalable cloud platform. Deploy cloud services (compute, storage, networking, database) following established best practices for governance and security.
• IaC Execution: Build and maintain cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), focusing on modularity and the use of version-controlled repositories.
• CI/CD Optimization: Maintain and optimize robust CI/CD pipelines that allow development teams to deploy frequently and safely.
• Cost Efficiency: Monitor usage reports to help right-size compute instances and identify opportunities for architectural tuning to manage cloud spend.
• Technical Support: Serve as a core technical resource for troubleshooting infrastructure-related blockers for the wider engineering team.

2. Monitor

• Observability: Configure integrated observability layers (metrics, logs, and tracing) to ensure visibility into service-level health.
• Incident Response: Implement and refine automated alerts; participate in the triage of performance issues and infrastructure failures through deep monitoring analysis.
• Capacity Reporting: Track and report on monthly performance, resource availability, and capacity metrics to ensure the platform scales ahead of demand.

3. Security & Compliance

• Identity & Access: Implement least-privilege IAM models and manage Permission Boundaries and dynamic IAM roles.
• DevSecOps: Integrate security tooling (CSPM, vulnerability scanning) into CI/CD workflows to catch misconfigurations before they reach production.
• Secrets Management: Maintain integrations for dynamic, short-lived credentials and ensure the automation of SSL/TLS certificate rotations.
• Compliance Support: Assist in gathering evidence and implementing controls for regulated environments (SOC2, FINRA).

Required Qualifications & Skills:

• A Bachelor's degree in a relevant field, such as Computer Science or Software Engineering, is preferred.
• 3 years of professional experience managing cloud platforms (AWS preferred).
• Experience working in highly regulated environments with strict audit and compliance requirements (SOC2, FINRA) is a plus.
• Solid experience with Terraform and automating workflows using at least one general-purpose language (Java, JavaScript, or C#).
• Proficient in Kubernetes and Docker; comfortable with GitOps workflows and managing containerized deployments.
• Experience improving monitoring stacks using Prometheus, Grafana, and distributed tracing.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to explain technical infrastructure concepts to peers in Engineering and Product.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail.