DevOps Engineer, II

Role Overview

We are looking for an Azure DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer to own and operate complex, cloud-native platforms supporting multiple enterprise products, including Reach and Raise. This is a hands-on role with full system ownership within a highly knowledgeable DevOps team, ideal for an engineer who thrives on autonomy, reliability, and impact. You'll design, automate, and support highly available Azure and sometimes AWS environments, lead cloud migrations, optimize cloud spend, and act as a primary on-call responder for critical systems. A few examples of technologies we work with daily: Azure Web Apps, Azure Functions, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, Key Vaults, Entra ID, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Octopus Deploy, Terraform, Docker, Linux, Windows, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server, GitHub, JIRA & Confluence.

A Day in the Life

• Own and maintain the reliability, performance, and availability of large-scale production systems — monitoring dashboards, reviewing alerts, and resolving incidents as they arise
• Serve as primary on-call and incident responder for customer-impacting issues, triaging, coordinating resolution, and leading post-mortems
• Design, build, and improve CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and Octopus Deploy
• Automate Azure infrastructure and services (Web Apps, Functions, SQL, Storage, Key Vaults, Entra ID) using IaC tooling
• Collaborate closely with engineering, product, and security teams to support deployments, migrations, and compliance initiatives
• Drive cloud cost optimization, scalability, and auto-scaling initiatives across hosted environments
• Implement and modernize incident management tooling and enforce security best practices and system hardening standards

Role Progression

• Within 1 month, you'll: Get fully onboarded into our Azure environments, understand the CI/CD pipeline landscape across Reach and Raise, and begin contributing to on-call rotations and day-to-day operations.
• Within 3 months, you'll: Take ownership of key infrastructure components, lead improvements to monitoring and alerting strategies, and drive meaningful progress on at least one cloud migration or cost optimization initiative.
• Within 6 months, you'll: Be a recognized technical leader on the DevOps team — independently designing and delivering complex infrastructure solutions, modernizing incident management tooling, and shaping the reliability roadmap across our product platforms.

About you

• BS in Computer Science, Software Engineering or equivalent, or a Bachelor's in an unrelated field with at least 7 years of professional experience. A relevant Master's degree is a plus
• 4+ years of experience in DevOps, SRE, or Cloud Engineering with a strong hands-on background in Microsoft Azure production environments
• Proven experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Octopus Deploy)
• Demonstrated ability to lead cloud migrations, infrastructure automation, and incident response at scale
• Experience with Azure services including Web Apps, Functions, SQL, Storage, Key Vaults, and Entra ID
• Ability to independently design and deliver complex technical solutions with minimal direction
• Strong understanding of security best practices, system hardening, and compliance standards
• Excellent collaboration skills — comfortable partnering with engineering, product, and security stakeholders
• Very strong scripting and automation skills – you believe we should automate just about everything
• Experience as a champion of Infrastructure as Code. Able to lead the transformation from manual "hands-on" in Azure to Infrastructure as Code using tools such as Terraform or ARM/Bicep templates
• Experience supporting application development teams who work in an iterative-based development environment using Agile/Scrum/Kanban
• Solid understanding of Azure billing and cost modeling
• Intellectually curious – prepared to challenge and be challenged
• Constantly strive to learn new technologies and look for ways to stay up to date in this rapidly changing industry

The annual base salary range for this exempt position is $116,000–$128,800 andreflects the midpoint through maximum of the established range for this role . Encoura establishes compensation using national market data, internal equity considerations, and organizational budget factors to ensure fairness and consistency across the organization. Certain roles may also be eligible for variable compensation in addition to base salary.

Employees in this role are eligible for Encoura’s comprehensive benefits package, which includes health insurance, retirement contributions, paid time off, and other programs that support employee well‑being.

About Us

Encoura’s mission is to empower students and institutions to create meaningful connections so everyone can make the most informed decisions to achieve their goals. Since 1972, the Company has evolved its products and services to better represent the link between students and higher education institutions and to create the highest probability of student success.

Encoura’s expertise now spans enrollment, research, marketing, student success, and advancement and provides an unmatched combination of higher education experience and innovative solutions for colleges and universities. The Company also offers Encourage® — the nation’s largest free college and career planning program used by millions of high school students and educators nationwide.

It is the policy of the Company to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information. All applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.

Encoura endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process or are limited in the ability and need an alternative method for applying, please contact the Talent Team.

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