Senior Google Cloud Platform DevOps Engineer

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) DevOps Engineer (100% Remote)

Salary Range: $125,000 - $145,000    

Clearance:  Must be a U.S. Citizen eligible to obtain a Moderate Public Trust. - Please DO NOT APPLY if you are not a U.S. CITIZEN - we cannot hire you for this position.

Benefits: Comprehensive Benefits Package including Medical, Dental, Vision, Employer paid Basic Life, LTD, STD, 3 weeks paid time off (PTO), 11 paid holidays, 401k with 100% immediate vesting, HSA, and more

Full Time

100% Remote for long-term 3+ year project with our Federal Government project.

Position Overview 

*** DIRECT HIRE ONLY. NO Corp to Corp or 1099 *** 

*** This position REQUIRES a current Certification in Google Cloud Platform (GCP). ***

Vanguard DevOps (www.vanguard-devops.ai) is seeking a highly qualified Google Cloud (GCP) DevOps Engineer to lead our Platform Engineering Team in support of our federal program in Silver Spring, Maryland.   

As the lead of our Platform Engineering team your role will be to architect, build, and maintain an internal developer platform (IDP) in our multi-cloud environment (Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud) that streamlines and automates the entire CI/CD process, enabling developers to focus on coding instead of infrastructure and deployment configuration. The platform will consist of GitLab for source code management, GitLab pipelines for the automated Continuous Integration jobs to build, secure, package, and push the runtime image to a container registry, and Continuous Delivery following the GitOps methodology to manage deployments via environments-as-code and automate deployments into a GKE Kubernetes cluster via a git operator such as Argo CD. 

Core Responsibilities:  

• Support application development teams by developing self-service tools and processes to automate CI/CD and deployments via GitOps, and facilitate cloud integration and adoption 
• Administer and maintain the agencies' enterprise GitLab instance, setting policy, establishing isolation controls for a multi-tenancy, provisioning new user accounts, groups and projects, runners, etc. 
• Create a library of reusable GitLab pipeline job templates to automate all steps of the Continuous Integration workflow to build and package the applications into docker images, automate security scanning of all images and dependencies, push the image to a container registry, and update the application Kubernetes Manifests or Helm Charts.   
• Automate application deployments via Implementing a GitOps operator such as Argo CD or Flux CD to watch for changes to an application’s K8s manifest or helm chart and automatically deploy the application into managed GKE clusters.   
• Deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters in GKE for container orchestration.  
• Automate application deployments to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and Oracle Cloud (OCI) via the GitOps methodology 
• Automate Oracle Cloud (OCI) infrastructure provisioning and configuration, such as load balancers, to support automated application deployments into OCI 
• Design and implement cloud networking solutions, including firewall and load balancer configuration 
• Implement federated authentication/authorization solutions via SAML and/or OIDC. 
• Create and maintaining hardened Golden Images of Apache Tomcat with all Apache recommended baseline security configurations applied 
• Create bash script(s) to automate all DISA Stig hardening rules for Apache Tomcat 
• Create an automated process to rollout Apache Tomcat updates to numerous applications running in both CGP GKE, and OCI Docker Swarms. 
• Migrate a suite of legacy applications from Jenkins CI/CD to the new IDP/GitLab platform   
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues, and collaborate with system administrators, DevOps engineers, developers, and government stakeholders  
• Develop and maintain high-quality technical documentation, including design specifications, deployment guides 

Required Qualifications:  

• This position REQUIRES a current Certification in Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience. 
• Minimum 4 years of hands-on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) experience, with proven experience implementing GCP services such as Compute Engine, IAM, Networking, GKE, Cloud Build, Cloud SQL 
• Proven experience in multi-cloud environments, specifically Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud. 
• Strong understanding and proven experience with all aspects of GitLab including instance administration, creation of CI/CD pipelines and jobs, configuring self-hosted runners, etc. 
• Strong understanding and proven experience with containerization with Docker 
• Strong understanding and proven experience with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)  
• Strong understanding and proven experience implementing the GitOps pattern to automate deployments into GKE using a git operator such as Argo CD or Flux CD  
• Strong understanding of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles 
• Strong expertise in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation. 
• Expertise in cloud networking (VPC, subnets, routing, load balancers, security policies, DNS, etc.). 
• Solid background in System Administration and hands-on experience with Linux systems. 
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot and optimize GCP cloud-based systems. 
• Good understanding of secrets management – Docker secrets, GitLab secrets, Hashicorp Vault 

Desired Qualifications:  

• One or more Google Cloud (GCP) Certifications 
• In addition to the requisite GCP experience, experience with Oracle Cloud is highly desirable 
• Understanding of Jenkins CI/CD and Jenkins pipelines 

Vanguard DevOps LLC provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. 

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.