● Minimum 5+ years in a customer-facing technical role.
● Minimum 3+ years designing, securing, and deploying large-scale cloud applications and solutions.
● Experience in Cloud Engineering, Platform Operations, DevOps, or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), including 1–2 years of FinOps or cloud cost optimization (AWS preferred).
● Strong experience with AWS and Azure cost management, including tagging, cost allocation, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting.
● Knowledge of Reserved Instances (RIs), Savings Plans, rightsizing, utilization optimization, and cloud cost governance.
● Experience with Power BI, Kusto Query Language (KQL), Amazon CloudWatch, Python, and PowerShell.
● Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Bicep).
● Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevOps, and infrastructure automation.
● Architect-level development skills in Python, PowerShell, Java, or similar programming languages.
● Subject Matter Expert (SME) in at least one cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform).
● Strong networking knowledge, including VPCs/VNets, Subnets, Route Tables, Security Groups/NSGs, Load Balancers, VPNs, Network Connectivity, and Routing.
● Strong Terraform development and modular infrastructure design experience.
● Experience with AWS services including Lambda, API Gateway, ECS, EKS, and other AWS native services.
● Experience with multi-account AWS environments including AWS Organizations, Control Tower, Service Control Policies (SCPs), Landing Zones, Account Vending, Baseline Configurations, and Guardrails.
● Experience with DevOps platforms including Bitbucket (preferred), GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps Pipelines, and GitLab CI/CD.
● Experience with security and governance tools including Cloud Custodian, Trivy, SAST/DAST tools, Pre-commit Hooks, and other DevSecOps tools.
● Experience with Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and remediation workflows.
● Experience with secrets management solutions including AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault, or equivalent.
● Experience with monitoring and observability tools including Amazon CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana, or similar platforms.
● Experience with container security and image scanning for Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.
● Experience working in regulated environments including HIPAA, SOC 2, HITRUST, or equivalent compliance frameworks.
● Understanding of cloud data governance, data classification, and data protection.
● Experience implementing cloud compliance, audit controls, and governance standards.
● Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills with attention to detail.
● Strong project management, organizational, and communication skills.
● Self-motivated, well-organized, able to manage multiple priorities, and willing to travel as required.
Top Expectations for a Senior Engineer
● Execute tagging, cost optimization, and reporting activities under senior guidance.
● Maintain accurate dashboards and deliver actionable insights to stakeholders.
● Assist in implementing policy-as-code, automation scripts, and cost-saving recommendations.
● Increase cost awareness among engineering teams and help embed FinOps principles.
● Create and maintain standard operating procedures and playbooks for recurring tasks.
● Demonstrate proven skills across multiple billable technologies, validated through certification, training, or demonstrated ability.
● Serve as a recognized subject-matter expert within your professional discipline.
● Contribute to more complex and critical environments, often exceeding the expectations of your current job title.
● Participate in and help lead a team of technical delivery resources across skill sets to achieve customer business and technology goals.
● Participate in and lead written deliverable creation across areas of expertise.
● Provide measurable input into AHEAD’s products, processes, standards, and plans.
● Provide time estimates for work based on available information.
● Coordinate and contribute to cross-practice deliverables using current templates.
● Act as a self-starter in identifying work during non-scheduled hours; prioritize and complete tasks independently, on time or ahead of schedule.
● Lead development and testing activities; contribute to refining methodology and best practices.
● Initiate and participate in authoring PCR requests when additional work is requested.
● Demonstrate depth and expertise across at least one core technology.
● Architect and lead the deployment of moderately complex cloud solutions.
● Understand the performance, scaling, and functional characteristics of software technologies.
● Understand open-source and cloud use cases and recommend standard design patterns and best practices.
● Maintain several relevant, higher-level certifications.
● Consistently meet goal objectives and exceed select goals.
Communication (Verbal and Written)
● Communicate with external customers, including senior management, on matters requiring explanation, interpretation, or advisement.
● Consistently meet or exceed customer expectations for communication and commitments.
● Work effectively with outside vendors on internal or customer-related issues.
● Participate in pre-sales activities, including scoping, positioning, and technology adoption/maturation.
● Identify new client opportunities within the POD and communicate them to leadership, including the Team Lead.
● Help customer leadership set strategic direction beyond tactics and technology.
● Write and lead complex deliverables within the practice; translate customer requirements into technical requirements.
● Works to influence direct team members, broader internal team, and external customers, to agree and accept new concepts, best practices, and approaches.
● Advises and trains more junior staff via mentorship while helping to drive the entire AHEAD platform.
● A reliable resource for marketing on thought leadership pieces for their practice for AHEAD and our customers.
● Has started speaking at industry conferences and/or webinars.
● Contributes to more complex workshops and understands how their area of expertise fits into our stitching message.
● Accepts responsibility for own actions and sometimes those of others as part of a team.
● Works well with immediate, extend and external teams, a true team player.
● Consistently meets expectations in terms of customer facing, writing, presentation and problem-solving skills and requires little to no supervision in this area.
● Consistently exhibits a positive attitude towards AHEAD and its customers.
● Willing to go the extra mile when asked to do so (i.e., time outside of normal working hours to support a customer initiative, production roll-out, could also be > 40 hours for short intervals).
● Consistently pursues self-development and drives the AHEAD business model for self and sometimes others on the team.
● Highly respected by peers and sales team.
● Support initiatives beyond your immediate area of responsibility.
● Encourage cross-team interaction.
● Motivate others to think creatively.
● Achieve success through others.