Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer

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.