Job Description
Staff Cloud Engineer (Contract-to-Hire)
Location: Scottsdale, AZ (preferred) | San Francisco, CA | Chicago, IL
Work Model: Hybrid (3 days onsite)
About the Role
Join a leading organization at the center of the U.S. financial ecosystem, powering secure, real-time payments used by hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses every day.
As a Staff Cloud Engineer, youll help modernize and scale cloud infrastructure supporting critical payment platforms. Youll work at the intersection of cloud architecture, platform engineering, and security/compliance, driving solutions that operate at national scale and high reliability.
This is a 12-month contract with strong potential to convert full-time.
What Youll Do Lead Cloud Architecture
What You Bring Core Experience
What Success Looks Like
Location: Scottsdale, AZ (preferred) | San Francisco, CA | Chicago, IL
Work Model: Hybrid (3 days onsite)
- Contract Length: 12 months (strong conversion potential)
- Compensation: $90$95/hour
- Work Authorization: Must be authorized to work in the U.S. (no sponsorship available)
About the Role
Join a leading organization at the center of the U.S. financial ecosystem, powering secure, real-time payments used by hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses every day.
As a Staff Cloud Engineer, youll help modernize and scale cloud infrastructure supporting critical payment platforms. Youll work at the intersection of cloud architecture, platform engineering, and security/compliance, driving solutions that operate at national scale and high reliability.
This is a 12-month contract with strong potential to convert full-time.
What Youll Do Lead Cloud Architecture
- Design and implement scalable, secure, and highly available AWS-based systems
- Define architecture patterns and standards used across multiple engineering teams
- Solve complex, open-ended technical challenges at scale
- Support migration of large-scale systems from on-prem environments to AWS
- Build resilient systems with strong fault tolerance, observability, and performance
- Partner with audit teams to address findings and implement improvements
- Design systems aligned with security, risk, and compliance frameworks (e.g., SOC 2)
- Ensure systems meet strict requirements for reliability, auditability, and data protection
- Lead Infrastructure as Code (IaC) initiatives using Terraform and similar tools
- Create reusable infrastructure components, APIs, and deployment pipelines
- Improve the developer experience by simplifying and standardizing cloud infrastructure
- Work cross-functionally with engineering, product, and security teams
- Drive alignment on technical decisions across multiple teams
- Act as a key contributor to long-term cloud strategy
- Troubleshoot complex distributed system issues in production
- Improve monitoring, alerting, and system reliability
- Continuously elevate engineering practices and standards
What You Bring Core Experience
- 8+ years of experience in cloud engineering, distributed systems, or platform engineering
- Strong expertise in AWS (compute, networking, storage, security, observability)
- Experience designing highly scalable, resilient systems
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible, or similar)
- Kubernetes (EKS or equivalent) and containerized environments
- CI/CD pipeline design and automation
- Strong understanding of networking, DNS, HTTP, TLS, and load balancing
- Experience owning and driving technical architecture across teams
- Ability to influence decisions without direct authority
- Proven track record building systems used by multiple engineering teams
- Strong foundation in backend development (Java/Spring or similar)
- Ability to debug and support application-layer issues when needed
- Work in regulated or high-security environments
- Exposure to audit processes or SOC 2 controls
- Experience with event-driven systems (Kafka, messaging frameworks)
- FinTech or payments systems experience
- Cloud certifications (AWS, Azure, or similar)
What Success Looks Like
- Deliver secure, scalable cloud solutions supporting critical financial systems
- Improve system reliability, performance, and compliance posture
- Enable engineering teams through better infrastructure, tooling, and standards
- Influence cloud strategy and make a measurable impact across the organization
- Work on high-impact systems that power real-time financial transactions nationwide
- Help shape the future of a modern cloud platform at scale
- Operate at a staff engineering level, influencing architecture and direction
- Collaborate with talented teams focused on innovation, security, and reliability
Numbers & Facts
| Location | Scottsdale, AZ |
| Industry | Staffing/Employment Agencies |
| Company Size | 500 to 999 employees |
| Year Founded | 2006 |
About Company
The Intersect Group is a different and better business partner. We create unparalleled value for our clients by combining industry-leading Consulting capabilities with comprehensive Staffing and recruitment services. Clients trust us to deliver results based on our deep expertise and proven resources within finance, accounting, and information technology. Through our flexible delivery approach, you get the right solution, at the right time to accelerate your success and achieve all of your mission-critical objectives.
Skills
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)unmatched
- Ansibleunmatched
- Apache Kafkaunmatched
- Application Programming Interface (API)unmatched
- Automationunmatched
- Building Systemsunmatched
- Cloud Architectureunmatched
- Cloud Computingunmatched
- Computer Networksunmatched
- Continuous Deployment/Deliveryunmatched
- Continuous Integrationunmatched
- Cross-Functionalunmatched
- DNS (Domain Name System)unmatched
- Debugging Skillsunmatched
- Distributed Computingunmatched
- Ecosystemsunmatched
- Financial Systemsunmatched
- Financial Transactionsunmatched
- HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol)unmatched
- High Availabilityunmatched
- High Reliabilityunmatched
- Identify Issuesunmatched
- Information/Data Security (InfoSec)unmatched
- Javaunmatched
- Large-Scale Systemsunmatched
- Load Balancingunmatched
- Machine Toolunmatched
- Maintain Complianceunmatched
- Microsoft Windows Azureunmatched
- Production Systemsunmatched
- Reliability Engineeringunmatched
- Riskunmatched
- SSL-TLS (Secure Socket Layer - Transport Layer Security)unmatched
- Software Administrationunmatched
- Software Engineeringunmatched
- Systems Reliabilityunmatched
- Systems Scalabilityunmatched
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