Advanced Specialist, DevOps & SRE

Job-ID: 26341Category: TechnologyLocation: Bloomington, MN, United StatesWorkplace: HybridSchedule: Full timePosted: 2026-10-29Closes: 2026-11-10DevOps EngineerGED Testing Service builds and operates the technology behind the GED high school equivalency credential: a student-facing portal, admin tools, mobile apps, and integrations with Pearson VUE for exam scheduling and Kibo for e-commerce. We are a joint venture between Pearson and the American Council on Education. Our platform runs on Microsoft Azure, with core workloads on Kubernetes (AKS) and production data on Azure SQL Managed Instance.What you'll doPlatform and reliabilityOperate and troubleshoot AKS clusters: upgrades, deployments, ingress, and the supporting Azure infrastructure across production, staging and lower environmentsMaintain and extend Terraform for networking, Application Gateway, Azure Firewall, Front Door, Key Vault and container registryBuild and improve Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines, support zero-downtime deployments, and take part in production incident responseData platform (high priority)Keep our Azure SQL Managed Instance healthy: backups, monitoring, capacity, and operational confidence that production data is protectedSupport secure analytics patterns that make data available to Tableau without exposing PIISecurity and complianceProvide technical evidence for audits, ISO 27001/27701 and client security questionnaires: encryption, access, logging, backups and platform controlsOwn day-to-day security hygiene: vulnerability management, access certification, certificate lifecycle, and coordination of penetration tests and disaster recovery exercisesPartnershipDocument and transfer knowledge about the system so the team is not dependent on any one personWhat you bringRequired5+ years in DevOps, platform engineering or SRE, including independent ownership of cloud infrastructureStrong Microsoft Azure skills: AKS, networking, Key Vault, Application Gateway or similar ingress patternsHands-on experience with SQL Server in Azure (Managed Instance or equivalent): backups, monitoring, performance and operational troubleshootingTerraform with disciplined plan/apply practices and remote stateKubernetes operations: workloads, ingress, secrets, upgrades and persistent storageCI/CD experience, Azure DevOps preferredAbility to partner with a senior contractor on knowledge transfer in both directions, learning the existing system before changing it, and mentoring peers on reliability and automation practicesStrongly preferMinneapolis area, or able to come into the office regularly at the start of the roleFamiliarity with security audits, questionnaires and control frameworks (ISO 27001/27701, StateRAMP or similar)Experience designing secure analytics access patterns using ETL, reporting stores or other controlled approachesTableau Server support, including OAuth-based SSO integrationRegulated or high-availability environments (education, assessment, healthcare, fintech)Our stackAzure · AKS · Terraform · Azure SQL Managed Instance · Azure DevOps · Docker/ACR · Key Vault · Redis · Application Gateway · Front Door · Splunk · New Relic · Tableau · Spring Boot · AngularWhy this roleReal ownership of a platform serving live candidates, including the database behind themBreadth beyond Kubernetes: SQL Managed Instance health, security, analytics architecture and legacy cleanup all matter hereDeep context from an experienced contractor who knows GEDTS inside and out, with the expectation that you become a second owner of itLocation and availabilityFull-time, primarily remote. We would like you in the Minneapolis office about once a week for the first few months, easing toward fully remote over time. Minneapolis-based candidates are a strong plus, but we will consider strong remote applicants.This is not a traditional pager rotation, but you will need to be reasonably reachable via Slack outside business hours when production issues arise. Coverage is shared with the development team and the existing contractor.Compensation at Pearson is influenced by factors including skill set, experience, and location. The full-time salary range for this role is $120,000 – $148,000. This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program. Information on benefits can be found here.Applications will be accepted through 10th November 2026. This window may be extended depending on business needs.Apply today and imagine the impact you can make. #LI-P1