Job Title: Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer.
Location: Washington, DC (On-site).
Employment Type: Contract (W2 through ZipStaff — No C2C or 1099).
About the Opportunity:
ZipStaff is seeking a highly skilled Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer to serve as a key technical lead for a major transportation organization.
In this role, you will design, deploy, automate, and maintain highly scalable, secure, enterprise-grade cloud environments—primarily within AWS, with secondary support for Azure. You will drive major cloud migrations, establish cloud governance policies, and optimize multi-cloud operations while mentoring junior engineers and delivering robust business continuity solutions.
What You’ll Do:
- Lead the end-to-end design, implementation, and operational management of scalable, resilient, and highly available AWS cloud infrastructure, with secondary support for Azure environments.
- Drive Infrastructure as Code (IaC) adoption using tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation to automate cloud provisioning, configuration management, patching, and deployments.
- Architect and execute enterprise cloud migration, application modernization, and continuous platform optimization strategies.
- Design and maintain standardized, reusable cloud platform templates and enterprise landing zones to accelerate secure team onboarding.
- Establish enterprise cloud security standards, IAM best practices, compliance controls, governance policies, and operational workflows.
- Design and implement comprehensive backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions across cloud workloads.
- Resolve complex cloud networking, infrastructure, and application integration issues; perform root-cause analysis with a high sense of urgency and ownership.
- Mentor junior cloud engineers, provide technical guidance across projects, and partner closely with DevOps, Security, Networking, and Application teams.
Required Qualifications:
- 7+ years of broad IT background spanning systems architecture, infrastructure management, operating systems, databases, enterprise applications, and hybrid networking.
- 5+ years of dedicated, hands-on experience designing, deploying, and managing enterprise cloud infrastructure and applications.
- Deep knowledge of core AWS services, including EC2, VPC, Route 53, ALB/NLB, S3, IAM, CloudWatch, SSM, RDS, Lambda, and container services (ECS/EKS).
- Practical working knowledge of Azure services, including Virtual Machines, VNETs, Azure Storage, IAM, and Azure Backup.
- Strong automation capabilities using PowerShell, Python, or Bash, along with experience managing Git-based source control and CI/CD pipelines.
- Solid understanding of DNS, TCP/IP, VPNs, firewalls, hybrid cloud connectivity, secrets management, and cloud security compliance controls.
- Hands-on experience with containerization technologies and platforms, including Docker and Kubernetes.
- Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills, a self-motivated drive to work independently or in an integrated team environment, and strong problem-solving skills under tight SLAs.
- Ability to work on-site in Washington, DC.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Prior experience leading cloud migrations or platform modernization initiatives in a large enterprise or transportation environment.
- Background establishing cloud governance, landing zones, and reusable platform templates.
- Experience mentoring junior engineers and collaborating across DevOps, Security, and Application teams.
- Additional depth with multi-cloud operations or advanced AWS/Azure services.
Benefits:
- Health Insurance.
- Dental Insurance.
- Vision Insurance.
- 401(k) + 401(k) matching.
- Paid time off.
- Referral Program.
About ZipStaff:
ZipStaff partners with leading organizations to connect skilled technology professionals with high-impact contract opportunities. We focus on quality matches, clear communication, and long-term success for candidates and clients.
To apply, submit your resume highlighting your 5+ years of hands-on AWS cloud infrastructure experience, IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation), Docker/Kubernetes, migrations, and any Azure exposure. Pure research or junior experience will not be considered.