Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, DEFCON AI

• The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience managing AWS and/or Azure environments, operating container platforms, and translating operational complexity into scalable, secure solutions. Experience working in regulated or compliance-driven industries (e.g., healthcare, defense, finance) is a strong plus
• 5+ years of experience in systems administration, cloud operations, or infrastructure engineering
• 3+ years of hands-on experience managing AWS and/or Azure environments, including virtual machine administration
• Strong Terraform experience, including modular design and state management; experience leading IaC migrations is a plus
• Demonstrated ability to automate operational workflows and reduce manual effort at scale
• Strong understanding of IAM, encryption (KMS, TLS), and network segmentation
• Experience with Linux (RHEL/Amazon Linux) and/or Windows Server in a cloud context
• Familiarity with containerization technologies (Docker, ECS, EKS, or Kubernetes)
• Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps practices
• Must be a US Citizen & all work must be performed in the United States
• Core Competencies:
• Infrastructure Ownership — takes end-to-end accountability for cloud environment health, security, and performance
• Automation Mindset — proactively identifies manual processes and replaces them with scalable, repeatable solutions
• Security-First Thinking — embeds security practices into every layer of infrastructure design and operations
• Cross-Functional Communication — translates technical complexity for business and compliance stakeholders
• Disciplined Documentation — produces clear, audit-ready artifacts without being asked
• Adaptability — comfortable operating across cloud providers, toolchains, and evolving compliance landscapes

Desirable

• We are seeking an experienced Cloud Infrastructure Engineer to design, deploy, and administer cloud environments with a strong emphasis on virtualization, automation, and security
• This role owns the full lifecycle of cloud infrastructure — from virtual machine provisioning and network architecture to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) deployments and continuous monitoring
• Cloud Infrastructure & Virtual Systems Administration
• Administer and maintain AWS and/or Azure environments, including day-to-day operations of virtual machines, networking, and storage
• Manage VPCs, subnets, routing tables, security groups, NACLs, and private networking constructs
• Deploy, maintain, and optimize EC2 instances, RDS, S3, IAM, KMS, Secrets Manager, and CloudTrail
• Build and manage hardened VM images (AMIs / golden images) for consistent, repeatable deployments
• Implement and support high availability, auto-scaling, and disaster recovery configurations
• Support multi-account or multi-subscription cloud governance structures (e.g., AWS Organizations, Azure Management Groups)
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Design and maintain infrastructure using Terraform, including modular design, remote state management, and workspace strategies
• Lead or support migrations from legacy IaC tooling (e.g., CloudFormation) to modern frameworks
• Enforce policy-as-code guardrails and maintain version-controlled infrastructure repositories
• Build reusable, secure baseline modules for VPC architecture, IAM roles, logging, monitoring, and encryption
• Virtualization & Containerization
• Administer virtualized workloads across cloud environments, including sizing, patching, lifecycle management, and cost optimization
• Support container-based workloads in ECS and/or EKS, including cluster management, networking, and image security
• Assist with transitions from legacy compute paradigms (e.g., EBS-backed instances) to modern container or serverless architectures
• Implement automated drift detection and remediation for both VMs and containerized environments
• Automation & DevSecOps Integration
• Identify and implement automation opportunities to reduce manual operational overhead and improve team velocity
• Integrate infrastructure provisioning and security controls into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or equivalent)
• Implement and maintain secure secrets management practices
• Collaborate with DevSecOps and application engineering teams to enforce least-privilege IAM policies and secure-by-default configurations
• Security, Compliance & Monitoring
• Apply and maintain security hardening baselines (CIS Benchmarks, DISA STIGs) for Linux and Windows virtual systems
• Configure and monitor AWS CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Config, and centralized logging pipelines
• Support SIEM integration (e.g., Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel) and assist with incident response
• Maintain vulnerability management lifecycle including patching, remediation tracking, and reporting
• Support compliance efforts aligned with relevant frameworks (NIST 800-171, CMMC, HIPAA, SOC 2, or FedRAMP as applicable)
• Cross-Functional Collaboration & Documentation
• Partner with development, security, and IT operations teams to deliver reliable, scalable services
• Produce and maintain thorough documentation — architecture diagrams, runbooks, SOPs, and evidence artifacts for audits or assessments
• Contribute to budget management, resource planning, and capacity forecasting for cloud environments
• What Success Looks Like:
• Cloud environments (AWS/Azure + EKS) are stable, secure, observable, and documented
• Infrastructure changes are repeatable through IaC with clear review and rollback paths
• Monitoring/logging and vulnerability remediation are routine—not scramble-driven
• Audit support artifacts (diagrams/runbooks/evidence) are kept current and usable