Senior Cloud Engineer

C.H Robinson is seeking a Senior Cloud Platform Engineer who combines strong software development capability with a deep foundation in cloud infrastructure and operations. In this role, you will design and build platform services, APIs, automation, and self-service experiences that help engineering teams provision, deploy, observe, secure, and operate cloud workloads more effectively.

You will work closely with application development, data science, security, and infrastructure teams to turn common cloud capabilities into reliable, reusable platform products. This is a hands-on engineering role with a strong development focus. You will write production-quality code, establish engineering patterns, integrate AI-assisted capabilities where they provide practical value, and improve the developer experience through well-designed abstractions and automation. Infrastructure expertise remains critical. You will participate in a support and on-call rotation and must be able to troubleshoot across the cloud platform, including applications, Kubernetes, networking, identity, data services, observability, CI/CD, and Infrastructure as Code. Major areas of focus include reliability, security, performance, resiliency, continuity, compliance, and cost effectiveness. Familiarity with Cloud FinOps principles is also important, along with a passion for eliminating waste, improving resource efficiency, and continuously optimizing cloud spend without compromising reliability, security, or performance. The ideal candidate is a pragmatic builder and self-starter who collaborates well, challenges the status quo constructively, and balances speed with operational excellence. You should be comfortable moving between application code, infrastructure, architecture, and production troubleshooting.

This role can be based only in Minnesota, Chicago or Kansas City

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain cloud platform services, APIs, command-line tools, automation, and reusable software components.
• Build self-service capabilities that enable product teams to provision and manage infrastructure and platform services safely and consistently.
• Develop production-quality software using Go, Rust, Python, .NET, or similar languages, and quickly learn additional languages and frameworks as needed.
• Create and integrate AI-enabled platform capabilities, including agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and clients, retrieval and tool integrations, and APIs that interact with large language models.
• Apply sound software engineering practices, including modular design, code review, automated testing, versioning, documentation, secure coding, and maintainable release processes.
• Build and improve CI/CD pipelines for application code, platform services, containers, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Develop reusable Infrastructure as Code modules and policy-driven automation for cloud provisioning, configuration, and governance.
• Partner with internal engineering teams to identify friction, translate requirements into platform capabilities, and drive adoption through clear documentation and intuitive developer experiences.
• Own services through their full lifecycle, including design, deployment, production readiness, monitoring, incident response, maintenance, and continuous improvement.
• Participate in the cloud team support and on-call rotation; diagnose and resolve issues across compute, containers, networking, DNS, identity, storage, data services, security controls, and deployment tooling.
• Design observability into platform services using logs, metrics, traces, dashboards, alerts, and service-level indicators.
• Improve platform reliability by reducing operational toil, eliminating recurring failure modes, and implementing resilient design and recovery patterns.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and make practical recommendations based on business value, supportability, security, reliability, and cost.
• Contribute to architecture, capacity planning, technical standards, engineering practices, cross-training, and mentoring.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of progressively responsible experience in software engineering, cloud engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or a related field.
• 5-7 years of hands‑on software development experience with one or more of the following: Go, Rust, Python, or .NET, with demonstrated ability to learn additional languages and frameworks quickly.
• Experience designing, building, testing, and supporting production software, APIs, services, automation, or developer tooling.
• Enterprise experience building, deploying, maintaining, and supporting workloads in Microsoft Azure or another major public cloud.
• Strong understanding of cloud and infrastructure fundamentals, including networking, DNS, load balancing, identity and access management, compute, storage, certificates, secrets, and security controls.
• Proficiency with containers and container orchestration, preferably Kubernetes.
• Proficiency with CI/CD concepts and tools, including source control, build automation, artifact management, deployment strategies, and environment promotion.
• Hands‑on experience with Infrastructure as Code and configuration automation, such as Terraform, Bicep, Ansible, or equivalent technologies.
• Experience programmatically integrating with large language models or AI platforms through APIs, agents, tools, MCP, or related patterns.
• Experience with automated testing, including unit, integration, functional, performance, and reliability testing.
• Experience designing and using observability capabilities across applications and infrastructure, including metrics, logs, traces, alerting, and APM tools.
• Strong Linux troubleshooting and systems administration skills.
• Experience with data platforms or messaging technologies such as Microsoft SQL Server, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Kafka, or comparable services.
• Ability to troubleshoot complex distributed systems and production issues across application and infrastructure layers.
• Ability and willingness to participate in an on‑call rotation and provide production support for cloud team services and platforms.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across software development, infrastructure, security, and business teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building internal developer platforms, platform APIs, service catalogs, golden paths, paved roads, or self-service portals.
• Experience designing multi‑tenant services, asynchronous workflows, event‑driven systems, or distributed systems.
• Familiarity with API design and lifecycle practices, including REST or gRPC, authentication and authorization, schema/version management, rate limiting, and API observability.
• Experience with AI engineering patterns such as tool calling, retrieval‑augmented generation, prompt and agent evaluation, guardrails, model routing, cost controls, and secure handling of enterprise data.
• Experience with GitOps, policy as code, secrets management, software supply‑chain security, or cloud governance automation.
• Experience applying site reliability engineering practices, including service-level objectives, error budgets, incident management, capacity planning, and post‑incident improvement.
• Experience contributing to technical standards, reusable libraries, open‑source projects, or engineering communities of practice.

Questioning if you meet the mark? Studies have shown that some individuals may be less likely to apply unless they match the job description exactly. Here at C.H. Robinson, we’re building an inclusive workplace where all employees feel they belong. If this position excites you, we welcome you to apply whether you check all the preferred qualifications or just a few. You may just be our next great fit!

Equal Opportunity

C.H. Robinson is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to a workplace and performance culture that reflects the strengths of our worldwide marketplace. We value unique experiences and diverse backgrounds of our people within our company, our business relationships, and our communities. We’re committed to providing an inclusive environment, free from harassment and discrimination, where all employees feel welcomed, valued and respected.

EOE\Disabled\Veteran

Benefits

Your Health, Wealth and Self

Your total wellbeing is the foundation of our business, and our benefits support your financial, family and personal goals. We provide the top-tier benefits that matter to you most, including:

• Three medical plans which include
• • Prescription drug coverage
  • Enhanced Fertility benefits
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Health Savings Account (including employer contribution)
• Dental and Vision
• Basic and Supplemental Life Insurance
• Short-Term and Long-Term Disability
• Paid observed holidays
• 2 paid floating holidays for U.S. hourly employees
• Flexible Time Off (FTO) offered to U.S. salaried employees — no accruals and no caps. Paid Time Off (PTO) offered to all other employees in the U.S. and Canada
• Paid parental leave
• Paid time off to volunteer in your community
• Charitable Giving Match Program
• 401(k) with 6% company matching
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Plus a broad range of career development, networking, and team-building opportunities

Learn more about our benefit offerings on our BENEFITS & WELLBEING page