Senior AWS Cloud Engineer

Senior AWS Cloud Engineer

Location: Plano, TX or Charlotte, NC

Work Arrangement: Hybrid – minimum 3 days onsite per week

Duration: 12–18 months

Employment Type: W2 Contract

Job Summary

The Senior Cloud Engineer / AWS Architect will design and implement secure, scalable, highly available AWS solutions within a large enterprise environment.

The role requires a very senior cloud engineering background (8–10+ years) with strong hands-on experience across AWS architecture, AWS database services, Terraform/Terraform Enterprise, IAM, networking, and cloud security.

Recent and relevant experience with Amazon RDS, Aurora, and PostgreSQL is particularly important. The candidate should be able to demonstrate that this database experience has been part of their recent hands-on work , rather than older experience listed on a resume.

The successful candidate will design end-to-end AWS database solutions using Infrastructure as Code , build reusable Terraform modules, establish secure IAM architectures, and support enterprise cloud automation and deployment patterns.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement end-to-end AWS cloud solutions within a large enterprise environment.
• Design and implement AWS database solutions using Infrastructure as Code.
• Provide hands-on architecture and engineering expertise for:
• Amazon RDS
• Amazon Aurora
• PostgreSQL
• Ensure AWS database solutions meet enterprise requirements for high availability, disaster recovery, performance, security, and scalability .
• Build reusable Terraform modules and establish standardized Infrastructure as Code patterns.
• Manage Terraform state, workspaces, remote backends, and environment promotion patterns.
• Design and manage Terraform Enterprise (TFE) workspaces, variables, VCS-driven workflows, and run governance.
• Implement Terraform policy and governance capabilities, including Sentinel/OPA where applicable.
• Develop and support CI/CD processes for Terraform deployments.
• Design and implement AWS IAM solutions using least-privilege principles.
• Develop IAM roles and policies, permission boundaries, SCPs, cross-account access, and federation/SSO integrations.
• Design secure AWS networking architectures, including VPCs, subnets, routing, Transit Gateway, VPC endpoints/PrivateLink, security groups, NACLs, DNS, and hybrid connectivity.
• Apply enterprise cloud security and compliance practices.
• Work with services and capabilities including KMS, Secrets Manager, Parameter Store, CloudTrail, and CloudWatch.
• Develop solutions that align with enterprise security, architecture, and governance standards.
• Collaborate with enterprise technical teams and stakeholders to define and implement cloud solutions.
• Support cloud automation and configuration management using Ansible where applicable.
• Provide technical guidance and contribute to architecture and engineering standards.

Required Qualifications / Must Haves

Senior-Level Cloud Engineering

• 8–10+ years of professional experience is required.
• Strong Cloud Engineering background as the primary skillset.
• Strong AWS cloud engineering and architecture experience.
• Demonstrated experience working in large enterprise environments .
• Strong project tenure and a history of successfully delivering projects through completion.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.

AWS Database Experience

Recent, relevant, hands-on database experience is critical.

• Strong hands-on experience with Amazon RDS .
• Strong hands-on experience with Amazon Aurora .
• Strong hands-on experience with PostgreSQL .
• Candidates should have meaningful recent experience with these database technologies.
• Experience designing database architectures for high availability, disaster recovery, performance, scalability, and cost optimization.

Terraform

• Extensive hands-on Terraform experience.
• Approximately 7+ years of Terraform experience preferred.
• Experience building reusable Terraform Infrastructure as Code modules.
• Strong understanding of:
• Terraform state
• Workspaces
• Remote backends
• Environment promotion
• Module development
• Strong Terraform Enterprise (TFE) experience.
• Experience with TFE workspace design, variable management, VCS-driven workflows, and run governance.
• Experience with policy-as-code such as Sentinel/OPA where applicable.

IAM & Security

IAM and security are major components of this role.

• Strong hands-on AWS IAM experience.
• Experience designing least-privilege access models.
• IAM roles and policies.
• Permission boundaries.
• Service Control Policies (SCPs).
• Cross-account access.
• Federation / SSO.
• Strong AWS security mindset.
• Experience with encryption, secrets management, auditability, and enterprise security controls.
• Experience with AWS security services including KMS, Secrets Manager, Parameter Store, and CloudTrail.

AWS Architecture & Networking

• Strong AWS architecture experience across secure, scalable, and highly available environments.
• Experience with multi-account and/or multi-region AWS environments.
• Strong AWS networking knowledge, including:
• VPC
• Subnets
• Route Tables
• NAT / Internet Gateway
• Transit Gateway
• VPC Endpoints / PrivateLink
• Security Groups / NACLs
• Route 53 / DNS
• VPN / Direct Connect

Azure

• Azure cloud experience is preferred.
• Candidates with broader multi-cloud enterprise experience are valued.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills

• CI/CD experience.
• Bitbucket / Bitbucket Pipelines.
• Jenkins.
• XLR.
• AWS CodePipeline.
• Shell scripting.
• Ansible / Ansible Playbooks.
• Additional Terraform Enterprise governance experience.
• Multi-cloud experience, including Azure.
• Prior banking or financial-services experience.