Cloud Engineer

Cloud Engineer

Sperry Rail is on a mission-critical journey to revolutionize the Rail Flaw Detection industry. Through the continuous development of cutting-edge diagnostic technologies and AI-assisted analysis, we are transforming railway safety worldwide. Our global engineering teams work collaboratively to develop step-change technologies that define Sperry as the unparalleled market leader.

For nearly a century, we have repeatedly modernized and improved rail diagnostics through our relentless pursuit of improvement. Determined is an understatement. We are obsessed with advancing science and raising the bar on what's possible with our ever-improving suite of products and service offerings.

We are agile and hungry and invite those with similar passions to join us in challenging the status quo and bringing new ideas to the market. Fast-paced, high-touch with a distinct sense of purpose. We offer more than a job; we offer an opportunity to be part of something different.

Role Summary

We are looking for an experienced Cloud Engineer to work on our AWS infrastructure, network architecture, and security posture alongside our UK-based cloud team. This is the first US seat on a team that has been UK-based until now, so you will be joining a live environment rather than starting from a blank page. This is a shared environment and a shared responsibility. You will be our senior cloud voice in the US, contributing to design and build, to uptime and reliability, and to day-to-day support, in partnership with permanent engineers and consultants in the UK. Being the expert in your timezone matters here: you will be close to the US business and often the first person available when something needs attention, and you will work the problem with your UK colleagues rather than around them. We are actively migrating workloads out of a legacy datacenter and onto AWS, so there is substantial build work alongside the run.

What We Expect From You

We expect an exceptional level of drive and ambition. You think beyond today's work to what the team and organization need next, champion bold ideas, and see them through. Your hunger is infectious – it inspires those around you to aim higher. We are looking for someone who sets the standard for humility. You create an environment where everyone feels valued and heard, mentor without seeking recognition, and handle both success and failure with grace. Your approach shapes team culture. Exceptional emotional intelligence is essential. You create psychological safety in every interaction, influence and persuade without authority, and navigate complex organizational dynamics with ease. Others will seek you out for guidance on people challenges. This role requires a high degree of self-direction. You will manage complex work with minimal oversight, identify problems and solutions proactively, and may lead workstreams. You make well-reasoned technical decisions in your own area and bring the significant ones to the team, because the environment is shared and the people you share it with need to know. You should be able to quickly grasp complex problems that span multiple systems or domains. We expect you to design effective solutions for non-trivial requirements, identify root causes efficiently, and consider performance, scalability, and maintainability in your approach.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain AWS cloud infrastructure for production, staging, and development environments
• Contribute to network architecture including VPCs, subnets, security groups, VPNs, Direct Connect, and DNS
• Implement and maintain security best practices: IAM policies, encryption, secrets management, compliance, and access controls
• Build and manage CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, and infrastructure-as-code (CloudFormation, CDK, or Terraform)
• Support the migration of remaining datacenter workloads to AWS
• Monitor, optimize, and troubleshoot cloud infrastructure for performance, cost, and reliability
• Implement disaster recovery, backup strategies, and incident response procedures
• Manage containerized workloads (Docker, ECS/Fargate, ECR)
• Act as the US-based point of contact for infrastructure questions and incidents, working them jointly with the UK team
• Improve the documentation, stability, and supportability of existing infrastructure
• Document architecture decisions, runbooks, and operational procedures
• Work as one team with UK-based engineers and consultants across time zones, sharing standards, reviews, and on-call rather than running a parallel setup
• Write clean, tested, well-documented code following engineering best practices
• Participate in code reviews, sprint planning, and technical design discussions
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including inspection engineers, data scientists, and product managers
• Contribute to a culture of continuous improvement, knowledge sharing, and technical excellence

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Deep expertise in AWS (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, RDS, Lambda, CloudFront, Route 53, ECS, CloudWatch, GuardDuty, Config, Security Hub)
• Strong networking knowledge: TCP/IP, DNS, VPN, load balancing, firewalls, network segmentation
• Strong security knowledge: IAM, encryption at rest and in transit, secrets management, compliance frameworks, vulnerability management
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (CloudFormation, CDK, or Terraform)
• Experience with CI/CD tooling (CodePipeline, GitHub Actions, Jenkins)
• Proficiency in scripting (Python, Bash) for automation
• Experience with containerization (Docker, ECS/Fargate)
• Proven ability to work independently, and equally to build and maintain systems jointly with engineers in another location
• Strong communication skills for cross-timezone collaboration, including written handover that stands on its own
• Familiarity with version control (Git), CI/CD pipelines, and agile development practices
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to learn new technologies quickly
• Good communication skills – able to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• A collaborative, team-first mindset aligned with our values of being Humble, Hungry, and Smart

Desirable Skills

• AWS certifications (Solutions Architect Professional, Security Specialty, Advanced Networking)
• Experience with Kubernetes/EKS
• Experience with datacenter-to-cloud migration programs
• Knowledge of compliance frameworks relevant to transport and rail (e.g., NIST, ISO 27001)
• Experience managing cloud costs and implementing FinOps practices
• Experience with observability tooling (CloudWatch, X-Ray, Datadog, Grafana)
• Experience in rail testing, NDT, or sensor-based inspection industries (ultrasound, eddy current, electromagnetic, etc.)