We are seeking a highly skilled Cloud Engineer Subject Matter Expert (SME) to join our team. The Senior Cloud Engineer (Cloud Engineer SME) is the senior technical implementation lead responsible for designing, building, and operationalizing secure, scalable AWS-based environments supporting modernization of complex, interdependent systems.
This role requires deep AWS engineering expertise and advanced Python development skills, as well as active participation in discovery, legacy system analysis, and phased migration planning. The Cloud Engineer SME will work closely with the Systems Architect and Technical Program Manager to assess existing environments, design migration-ready architectures, and implement cloud-native solutions aligned to modernization sequencing and governance requirements.
This is not a pure infrastructure role — the Cloud Engineer SME must be capable of analyzing legacy systems, evaluating migration paths, and translating architectural strategy into deployable cloud solutions.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Discovery, Legacy Analysis & Migration Planning
- Participate in structured discovery efforts across legacy systems.
- Analyze existing application architectures, infrastructure dependencies, batch schedules, data flows, and integration points.
- Contribute to formal system inventory documentation.
- Identify cloud readiness gaps and modernization constraints.
- Support classification of systems using the 7 Rs migration framework.
- Provide technical input into phased migration roadmaps and sequencing plans.
- Assess operational risk, integration complexity, and environment dependencies during modernization planning.
- Document current-state (As-Is) technical architecture and assist in defining target-state (To-Be) environment patterns.
2. Cloud Infrastructure & Environment Engineering
- Design and implement AWS cloud environments aligned to enterprise provisioning constraints.
- Develop and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) using Terraform or CloudFormation.
- Establish repeatable environment patterns for development, testing, staging, and production.
- Implement secure network architecture (VPC segmentation, IAM least privilege, encryption).
- Design for high availability, resiliency, and disaster recovery.
- Align environment provisioning with migration waves and modernization sequencing.
3. Python Engineering for Cloud-Native Applications (Required)
- Develop and maintain Python-based cloud components including:
- Serverless functions
- Orchestration utilities
- Data validation and transformation scripts
- Automation tooling
- Write production-quality Python code with testability, logging, secure coding practices, and modular design.
- Review and support Python refactoring patterns during legacy modernization.
- Ensure Python runtime environments are reproducible and aligned with CI/CD standards.
4. Cloud-Native Application Enablement
- Implement scalable AWS compute solutions (Lambda, ECS/EKS/Fargate, Glue, Aurora/PostgreSQL, S3, Batch).
- Evaluate serverless vs containerized approaches based on workload characteristics.
- Support refactoring efforts by providing optimized cloud runtime patterns.
- Improve performance, scalability, and observability for data-intensive workloads.
5. DevSecOps & CI/CD Implementation
- Design and implement CI/CD pipelines integrating:
- Automated builds
- Unit and integration tests
- Regression validation
- Security scanning
- Embed quality and compliance gates into pipelines.
- Automate environment provisioning and deployments.
- Ensure version-controlled infrastructure and reproducible deployments.
6. Observability & Operational Readiness
- Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting standards.
- Establish performance baselines and capacity thresholds.
- Support load testing and scalability validation.
- Document operational runbooks for sustained support.
7. Cross-Team Integration Support
- Support integration across multiple interdependent systems.
- Assist in identifying and mitigating interface risks.
- Collaborate with data engineering teams on schema stability and data lifecycle controls.
- Ensure consistency in cloud patterns across teams.
8. Governance & Compliance Alignment
- Contribute to architecture and environment documentation required for governance reviews.
- Support ATO readiness and audit artifact collection.
- Align cloud implementation with security and compliance requirements.
- Maintain traceable, auditable deployment documentation.
Core Competencies
- Ability to translate discovery findings into technical modernization solutions.
- Strong cloud engineering depth combined with legacy system analysis capability.
- Migration sequencing awareness and risk identification.
- Automation-first engineering mindset.
- Strong documentation and communication skills.
- Ability to operate effectively within structured modernization programs
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
- 8+ years of professional experience in cloud engineering.
- Advanced Python expertise for cloud-native applications and automation.
- Demonstrated experience performing legacy system analysis and cloud readiness assessments.
- Experience contributing to migration plans using structured frameworks (including 7 Rs).
- Strong AWS expertise across compute, networking, storage, database, identity, and monitoring services.
- Experience implementing Infrastructure-as-Code.
- Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and automated testing.
- Strong troubleshooting, performance optimization, and systems integration skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting data-intensive or statistical processing systems.
- Experience supporting SAS-to-Python modernization efforts.
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect certification.
- Experience in regulated or governance-heavy environments.
- Experience working within enterprise data lake ecosystems.
Benefits
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Flexible spending account
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Professional development assistance
- Referral program
- Tuition reimbursement
- Vision insurance
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field
- 7+ years of experience in cloud architecture, with a strong focus on AWS services
- US Citizen; Ability to obtain a Public Trust security clearance
- Proven experience in designing and implementing cloud-native applications
- Strong understanding of application migration strategies and tools
- Excellent knowledge of AWS services and best practices
- Experience with containers (Docker, Kubernetes) and serverless architectures
- Strong skills leveraging IaC developing automated deployment and orchestrations solutions
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills
- AWS Certification (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect)
- Experience with large data search and discovery applications
- Experience supporting federal government organizations and missions
- Ability to be onsite in Suitland Maryland 2-5 days a week
What We Do
Passion and Purpose. We are a start-up borne out of a group of architects and engineers providing solutions that transform with digital breakthroughs. We Partner - Partnership to us means being all in - on the ground, in the weeds, producing and delivering mission solutions. We Innovate - driving digital innovation and experimentation to improve decision services for the American people. We Engage – co-creating to deliver HCD (human centered design) to solve tour customers digital challenges. We Deliver – and take pride and accountability in everything we do. We are Ignite IT. Ignite IT deploys teams that are customer-obsessed, delivering a CX (Customer Experience) renaissance to our Private and Public Sector customers. We combine Commercial BX (Business of Experience) with customer delivery experts to benefit agencies to innovate and improve services and launch new digital solutions. We have built a company foundation dependent on each of our employee’s success, and provide a healthy, engaging, community where learning and knowledge sharing are encouraged. We empower our employees to be bold, continually innovate and propose new ideas to improve processes and services. We engage daily on work that touches millions of people, always focusing on positive impacts and results. We enable mission services that enable Enterprise companies to succeed in digital transformation, protect Border Agents, deploy the Army Reserve and National Guard, providing decision dominance to make America safer. We apply these digital services across the Private and Public Sectors to include include HHS, DHS, AOUSC and Army. We aim to continually raise the bar for our customers to expect more from their digital services. For more information, visit www.igniteitservices.com
.png)
