What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Azure DevOps Engineer position at Princeton IT Services, Inc?
Job Title: Senior Azure DevOps Engineer (CI/CD, AKS & Cloud Automation)
Location: Princeton, NJ
Job Type: Contract
Job Description
Senior Azure DevOps Engineer (CI/CD, AKS & Cloud Automation)
We are looking for a highly skilled Senior Azure DevOps Engineer with deep, hands-on expertise in CI/CD automation, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and containerized application deployments. This role involves owning end-to-end DevOps architecture, driving cloud automation initiatives, and ensuring reliable, secure, and scalable delivery pipelines across enterprise cloud environments.
Role & Responsibilities
DevOps Architecture & Automation
Location: Princeton, NJ
Job Type: Contract
Job Description
Senior Azure DevOps Engineer (CI/CD, AKS & Cloud Automation)
We are looking for a highly skilled Senior Azure DevOps Engineer with deep, hands-on expertise in CI/CD automation, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and containerized application deployments. This role involves owning end-to-end DevOps architecture, driving cloud automation initiatives, and ensuring reliable, secure, and scalable delivery pipelines across enterprise cloud environments.
Role & Responsibilities
DevOps Architecture & Automation
- Architect, implement, and optimize enterprise-grade CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or equivalent tools.
- Lead the design and automation of cloud infrastructure using Terraform, Bicep, ARM templates, and GitOps methodologies.
- Build standardized deployment patterns, YAML templates, reusable modules, and automation frameworks.
- Design, deploy, and manage production-grade AKS clusters, including autoscaling, node pools, networking, and cluster security.
- Lead containerization strategies using Docker, Helm, and Kubernetes best practices.
- Implement cluster governance, RBAC, secrets management, and zero-downtime upgrade strategies.
- Drive cloud operational excellence across Azure resources (ACR, VNets, Key Vault, Managed Identities, Storage, API Management, etc.).
- Enhance system reliability through monitoring, observability, and alerting using Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Log Analytics, Prometheus/Grafana.
- Troubleshoot complex production issues across infrastructure, pipelines, and application layers.
- Implement DevSecOps best practices: security scans, SAST/DAST, container image scanning, and compliance gates.
- Drive platform hardening, identity management, access control, and cloud security posture improvements.
- Provide technical mentorship to DevOps engineers and development teams.
- Work closely with architecture, SRE, and development teams to define cloud-native strategies and deployment standards.
- Lead cross-team technical discussions, design reviews, and continuous improvement initiatives.
- 7 years of experience in DevOps, Cloud Engineering, or Platform Engineering roles.
- Expert-level knowledge of Microsoft Azure and its core services.
- Strong hands-on experience with AKS, Kubernetes internals, Helm, Ingress, service mesh, and container orchestration.
- Deep expertise in CI/CD pipeline automation using Azure DevOps (YAML), GitHub Actions, or similar tools.
- Advanced experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform preferred; Bicep/ARM optional).
- Strong scripting capability in PowerShell, Bash, or Python.
- Experience designing secure, scalable, and highly available cloud architectures.
- Strong understanding of networking (VNet, routing, load balancing, DNS) and security concepts.
- Azure certifications such as AZ-400, AZ-305, AZ-104, AZ-500.
- Experience with GitOps (ArgoCD, FluxCD).
- Knowledge of microservices, cloud-native design, and distributed systems.
- Experience in large enterprise environments supporting mission-critical workloads.