Lead DevOps Engineer

REVIEW CRITERIA:

MANDATORY:

• Strong Hands-On AWS Cloud Engineering / DevOps Profile
• Mandatory (Experience 1): Must have 12+ years of experience in AWS Cloud Engineering / Cloud Operations / Application Support
• Mandatory (Experience 2): Must have strong hands-on experience supporting AWS production environments (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, ALB, CloudWatch)
• Mandatory (Infrastructure as a code): Must have hands-on Infrastructure as Code experience using Terraform in production environments
• Mandatory (AWS Networking): Strong understanding of AWS networking and connectivity (VPC design, routing, NAT, load balancers, hybrid connectivity basics)
• Mandatory (Cost Optimization): Exposure to cost optimization and usage tracking in AWS environments
• Mandatory (Core Skills): Experience handling monitoring, alerts, incident management, and root cause analysis
• Mandatory (Soft Skills): Strong communication skills and stakeholder coordination skills

ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES:

We are looking for a hands-on AWS Cloud Engineer to support day-to-day cloud operations, automation, and reliability of AWS environments. This role works closely with the Cloud Operations Lead, DevOps, Security, and Application teams to ensure stable, secure, and cost-effective cloud platforms.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Operate and support AWS production environments across multiple accounts
• Manage infrastructure using Terraform and support CI/CD pipelines
• Support Amazon EKS clusters, upgrades, scaling, and troubleshooting
• Build and manage Docker images and push to Amazon ECR
• Monitor systems using CloudWatch and third-party tools; respond to incidents
• Support AWS networking (VPCs, NAT, Transit Gateway, VPN/DX)
• Assist with cost optimization, tagging, and governance standards
• Automate operational tasks using Python, Lambda, and Systems Manager

IDEAL CANDIDATE:

• Strong hands-on AWS experience (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, ALB, CloudWatch)
• Experience with Terraform and Git-based workflows
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes / EKS
• Experience with CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, etc.)
• Scripting experience in Python or Bash
• Understanding of monitoring, incident management, and cloud security basics

NICE TO HAVE:

• AWS Associate-level certifications
• Experience with Karpenter, Prometheus, New Relic
• Exposure to FinOps and cost optimization practices

Role Overview:

We are looking for a skilled DevOps Engineer to join our team. You will be responsible for managing and automating the deployment, monitoring, and scaling of our applications, ensuring high availability, security, and performance. The ideal candidate is passionate about automation, CI/CD, and cloud infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and maintain CI/CD pipelines for development, testing, and production environments.
• Manage cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP, or others) and ensure scalability, reliability, and security.
• Automate deployment, configuration management, and infrastructure provisioning using tools like Terraform, Ansible, or Chef.
• Monitor application performance and infrastructure health using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, or Datadog.
• Collaborate with development and QA teams to streamline workflows and resolve deployment issues.
• Implement security best practices in pipelines, infrastructure, and cloud environments.
• Maintain version control and manage release cycles.
• Troubleshoot and resolve production issues efficiently.

Required Skills & Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, IT, or related field.
• Proven experience in DevOps, system administration, or cloud engineering.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI, etc.).
• Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Scripting skills (Python, Bash, or PowerShell).
• Knowledge of infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Familiarity with monitoring and logging tools.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, and teamwork skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with microservices architecture.
• Knowledge of networking, load balancing, and firewalls.
• Exposure to Agile/Scrum methodologies.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary
• Flexible working hours and remote options.
• Learning and development opportunities.
• Collaborative and inclusive work environment.

About the Job

This is a full-time role for a Lead DevOps Engineer at Spark Eighteen. We are seeking an experienced DevOps professional to lead our infrastructure strategy, design resilient systems, and drive continuous improvement in our deployment processes. In this role, you will architect scalable solutions, mentor junior engineers, and ensure the highest standards of reliability and security across our cloud infrastructure. The job location is flexible with preference for the Delhi NCR region.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor the DevOps/SRE team
• Define and drive DevOps strategy and roadmaps
• Oversee infrastructure automation and CI/CD at scale
• Collaborate with architects, developers, and QA teams to integrate DevOps practices
• Ensure security, compliance, and high availability of platforms
• Own incident response, postmortems, and root cause analysis
• Budgeting, team hiring, and performance evaluation

Requirements

Technical Skills

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 7+ years of professional DevOps experience with demonstrated progression.
• Strong architecture and leadership background
• Deep hands-on knowledge of infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and cloud
• Proven experience with monitoring, security, and governance
• Effective stakeholder and project management
• Experience with tools like Jenkins, ArgoCD, Terraform, Vault, ELK, etc.
• Strong understanding of business continuity and disaster recovery

Soft Skills

• Cross-functional communication excellence with ability to lead technical discussions.
• Strong mentorship capabilities for junior and mid-level team members.
• Advanced strategic thinking and ability to propose innovative solutions.
• Excellent knowledge transfer skills through documentation and training.
• Ability to understand and align technical solutions with broader business strategy.
• Proactive problem-solving approach with focus on continuous improvement.
• Strong leadership skills in guiding team performance and technical direction.
• Effective collaboration across development, QA, and business teams.
• Ability to make complex technical decisions with minimal supervision.
• Strategic approach to risk management and mitigation.

What We Offer

• Professional Growth: Continuous learning opportunities through diverse projects and mentorship from experienced leaders
• Global Exposure: Work with clients from 20+ countries, gaining insights into different markets and business cultures
• Impactful Work: Contribute to projects that make a real difference, with solutions generating over $1B in revenue
• Work-Life Balance: Flexible arrangements that respect personal wellbeing while fostering productivity
• Career Advancement: Clear progression pathways as you develop skills within our growing organization
• Competitive Compensation: Attractive salary packages that recognize your contributions and expertise

Our Culture

At Spark Eighteen, our culture centers on innovation, excellence, and growth. We believe in:

• Quality-First: Delivering excellence rather than just quick solutions
• True Partnership: Building relationships based on trust and mutual respect
• Communication: Prioritizing clear, effective communication across teams
• Innovation: Encouraging curiosity and creative approaches to problem-solving
• Continuous Learning: Supporting professional development at all levels
• Collaboration: Combining diverse perspectives to achieve shared goals
• Impact: Measuring success by the value we create for clients and users

Apply Here - https://tinyurl.com/t6x23p9b

• Candidate should be able to write the sample programs using the Tools (Bash, PowerShell, Python or Shell scripting)
• Analytical/logical reasoning
• GitHub Actions
• Should have good working experience with GitHub Actions
• Repository/Workflow Dispatch, writing reusable workflows, etc
• AZ CLI commands
• Hands-on experience with AZ CLI commands

Role Introduction

• This role involves guiding the DevOps team towards successful delivery of Governance and

toolchain initiatives by removing manual tasks.

• Operate toolchain applications to empower engineering teams by providing, reliable, governed

self-service tools and supporting their adoption

• Driving good practice for consumption and utilisation of the engineering toolchain, with a focus

on DevOps practices

• Drive good governance for cloud service consumption

• Involves working in a collaborative environment and focus on leading team and providing

technical leadership to team members.

• Involves setting up process and improvements for teams on supporting various DevOps tooling

and governing the tooling.

• Co-ordinating with multiple teams within organization

• Lead on handovers from architecture teams to support major project rollouts which require the

Toolchain governance DevOps team to operationally support tooling

What you will do

• Identify and implement best practices, process improvement and automation initiatives for

improvement towards quicker delivery by removing manual tasks

• Ensure best practices and process are documented for reusability and keeping up-to date on

good practices and standards.

• Re-usable automation and compliance service, tools and processes

• Support and management of toolchain, toolchain changes and selection

• Identify and implement risk mitigation plans, avoid escalations, resolve blockers for teams.

Toolchain governance will involve operating and responding to alerts, enforcing good tooling

governance by driving automation, remediating technical debt and ensuring the latest tools

are utilised and on the latest versions

• Triage product pipelines, performance issues, SLA/SLO breaches, service unavailable along

with ancillary actions such as providing access to logs, tools, environments.

• Involve in initial / detailed estimates during roadmap planning or feature

estimation/planning of any automation identified for a given toolset.

• Develop, refine, and tune integrations between various tools

• Discuss with Product Owner/team on any challenges from implementation, deployment

perspective and assist in arriving probable solution and escalate any risks to get them

resolved w.r.t DevOps toolchain.

• In consultation with Head of DevOps and other stake holders, prioritization of items, item-

task breakdown; accountable for squad deliverables for sprint

• Involve in reviewing current components and plan for upgrade and ensure its communicated

to wider audience within Organization

• Involve in reviewing access / role and enhance and automate provisioning.

• Identify and encourage areas for growth and improvement within the team e.g conducts

regular 1-2-1’s with squad members to provide support, mentoring and goal setting

• Involve in performance management ,rewards and recognition of team members, Involve in

hiring process.• Plan for upskill of team to know about tools and perform tasks. Ensure quicker onboarding

of new joiners/freshers to team to be productive.

• Review ticket metrics to measure the health of the project including SLAs and plan for

improvement.

• Requirement for on call for critical incidents that happen Out of Hours, based on tooling SLA.

This may include planning standby schedule for squad, carrying out retrospective for every

callout and reviewing SLIs/SLOs.

• Owns the tech/repair debt, risk and compliance for the tooling with respect to

infrastructure, pipelines, access etc

• Track optimum utilization of resources and monitor/track the delivery schedule

• Review solutions designs with the Architects / Principal DevOps Engineers as required

• Provide monthly reporting which align to DevOps Tooling KPIs

What you will have

• Candidate should have 8+ years of experience and Hands-on DevOps experience and

experience in team management.

• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, Team player

• Good working experience of CI/CD tools like Jenkins, SonarQube, FOSSA, Harness, Jira, JSM,

ServiceNow etc.

• Good hands on knowledge of AWS Services like EC2, ECS, S3, IAM, SNS, SQS, VPC, Lambda,

API Gateway, Cloud Watch, Cloud Formation etc.

• Experience in operating and governing DevOps Toolchain

• Experience in operational monitoring, alerting and identifying and delivering on both repair

and technical debt

• Experience and background in ITIL/ITSM processes. The candidate will ensure development

of the appropriate (ITSM) model and processes, based on the ITIL Service Management

framework. This includes the strategic, design, transition, and operation services and

continuous service improvement

• Provide ITSM leadership experience and coaching processes

• Experience on various tools like Jenkins, Harness, Fossa,

• Experience of hosting and managing applications on AWS/AZURE•

• Experience in CI/CD pipeline (Jenkins build pipelines)

• Experience in containerization (Docker/Kubernetes)

• Experience in any programming language (Node.js or Python is preferred)

• Experience in Architecting and supporting cloud based products will be a plus

• Experience in PowerShell & Bash will be a plus

• Able to self manage multiple concurrent small projects, including managing priorities

between projects

• Able to quickly learn new tools

• Should be able to mentor/drive junior team members to achieve desired outcome of

roadmap-

• Ability to analyse information to identify problems and issues, and make effective decisions

within short span

• Excellent problem solving and critical thinking

• Experience in integrating various components including unit testing / CI/CD configuration.

• Experience to review current toolset and plan for upgrade.

• Experience with Agile framework/Jira/JSM tool.• Good communication skills and ability to communicate/work independently with external

teams.

• Highly motivated, able to work proficiently both independently and in a team environment

Good knowledge and experience with security constructs –

• Provision Dev Test Prod Infrastructure as code using IaC (Infrastructure as Code)
• Good knowledge on Terraform
• In-depth knowledge of security and IAM / Role Based Access Controls in Azure, management of Azure Application/Network Security Groups, Azure Policy, and Azure Management Groups and Subscriptions.
• Experience with Azure and GCP compute, storage and networking (we can also look for GCP )
• Experience in working with ADLS Gen2, Databricks and Synapse Workspace
• Experience supporting cloud development pipelines using Git, CI/CD tooling, Terraform and other Infrastructure as Code tooling as appropriate
• Configuration Management (e.g. Jenkins, Ansible, Git, etc...)
• General automation including Azure CLI, or Python, PowerShell and Bash scripting
• Experience with Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery models
• Knowledge of and experience in resolving configuration issues
• Understanding of software and infrastructure architecture
• Experience in Paas, Terraform and AKS
• Monitoring, alerting and logging tools, and build/release processes Understanding of computing technologies across Windows and Linux

• Experience using AWS (that’s just common sense)
• Experience designing and building web environments on AWS, which includes working with services like EC2, ELB, RDS, and S3
• Experience building and maintaining cloud-native applications
• A solid background in Linux/Unix and Windows server system administration
• Experience using https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/devops-tutorial/devops-tools" target="_blank">DevOps tools in a cloud environment, such as Ansible, Artifactory, https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/docker-tutorial/what-is-docker-container" target="_blank">Docker, GitHub, https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/jenkins-tutorial/what-is-jenkins" target="_blank">Jenkins, https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/kubernetes-tutorial/what-is-kubernetes" target="_blank">Kubernetes, Maven, and Sonar Qube
• Experience installing and configuring different application servers such as JBoss, Tomcat, and WebLogic
• Experience using monitoring solutions like CloudWatch, ELK Stack, and Prometheus
• An understanding of writing Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), using tools like CloudFormation or Terraform
• Knowledge of one or more of the most-used programming languages available for today’s cloud computing (i.e., SQL data, XML data, R math, Clojure math, Haskell functional, Erlang functional, Python procedural, and Go procedural languages)
• Experience in troubleshooting distributed systems
• Proficiency in script development and scripting languages
• The ability to be a team player
• The ability and skill to train other people in procedural and technical topics
• Strong communication and collaboration skills

As a special aside, an AWS engineer who works in DevOps should also have experience with:

• The theory, concepts, and real-world application of Continuous Delivery (CD), which requires familiarity with tools like AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, and AWS CodePipeline
• An understanding of automation

Are you the one? Quick self-discovery test:

1. Love for the cloud: When was the last time your dinner entailed an act on “How would ‘Jerry Seinfeld’ pitch Cloud platform & products to this prospect” and your friend did the ‘Sheldon’ version of the same thing.
2. Passion: When was the last time you went to a remote gas station while on vacation and ended up helping the gas station owner saasify his 7 gas stations across other geographies.
3. Compassion for customers: You listen more than you speak.  When you do speak, people feel the need to listen.
4. Humor for life: When was the last time you told a concerned CEO, ‘If Elon Musk can attempt to take humanity to Mars, why can’t we take your business to run on the cloud?

Your bucket of undertakings:

This position will be responsible to consult with clients and propose architectural solutions to help move & improve infra from on-premise to cloud or help optimize cloud spend from one public cloud to the other.

1. Be the first one to experiment on new-age cloud offerings, help define the best practice as a thought leader for cloud, automation & Dev-Ops, be a solution visionary and technology expert across multiple channels.
2. Continually augment skills and learn new tech as the technology and client needs evolve
3. Use your experience in the Google cloud platform, AWS, or Microsoft Azure to build hybrid-cloud solutions for customers.
4. Provide leadership to project teams, and facilitate the definition of project deliverables around core Cloud-based technology and methods.
5. Define tracking mechanisms and ensure IT standards and methodology are met; deliver quality results.
6. Participate in technical reviews of requirements, designs, code, and other artifacts
7. Identify and keep abreast of new technical concepts in the google cloud platform
8. Security, Risk, and Compliance - Advise customers on best practices around access management, network setup, regulatory compliance, and related areas.

Accomplishment Set 

• Passionate, persuasive, articulate Cloud professional capable of quickly establishing interest and credibility 
• Good business judgment, a comfortable, open communication style, and a willingness and ability to work with customers and teams.
• Strong service attitude and a commitment to quality.
• Highly organised and efficient.
• Confident working with others to inspire a high-quality standard.

Experience :

• 4-8 years experience in Cloud Infrastructure and Operations domains
• Experience with Linux systems and/OR Windows servers
• Specialize in one or two cloud deployment platforms: AWS, GCP
• Hands on experience with AWS services (EKS, ECS, EC2, VPC, RDS, Lambda, GKE, Compute Engine, API Gateway, AppSync and ServiceMesh)
• Experience in one or more scripting language-Python, Bash
• Good understanding of Apache Web Server, Nginx, MySQL, MongoDB, Nagios
• Logging and Monitoring tools (ELK, Stackdriver, CloudWatch)
• DevOps Technologies (AWS DevOps, Jenkins, Git, Maven)
• Knowledge on Configuration Management tools such as Ansible, Terraform, Puppet, Chef, Packer
• Experience working with deployment and orchestration technologies (such as Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos)

Education :

1. Is Education overrated? Yes. We believe so. However there is no way to locate you otherwise. So unfortunately we might have to look for a Bachelor's or Master's degree in engineering from a reputed institute or you should be programming from 12. And the latter is better. We will find you faster if you specify the latter in some manner. Not just degree, but we are not too thrilled by tech certifications too ... :)
2. To reiterate: Passion to tech-awesome, insatiable desire to learn the latest of the new-age cloud tech, highly analytical aptitude and a strong ‘desire to deliver’ outlives those fancy degrees!
3. 3-8 years of experience with hands-on experience in Cloud Computing (AWS/GCP) and IT operational experience in a global enterprise environment.
4. Good analytical, communication, problem solving, and learning skills.
5. Knowledge on programming against cloud platforms such as Google Cloud Platform and lean development methodologies.

• Mandatory: Docker, AWS, Linux, Kubernete or ECS
• Prior experience provisioning and spinning up AWS Clusters / Kubernetes
• Production experience to build scalable systems (load balancers, memcached, master/slave architectures)
• Experience supporting a managed cloud services infrastructure
• Ability to maintain, monitor and optimise production database servers
• Prior work with Cloud Monitoring tools (Nagios, Cacti, CloudWatch etc.)
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos, NoSQL databases (DynamoDB, Cassandra, MongoDB, etc)
• Other Open Source tools used in the infrastructure space (Packer, Terraform, Vagrant, etc.)
• In-depth knowledge on Linux Environment.
• Prior experience leading technical teams through the design and implementation of systems infrastructure projects.
• Working knowledge of Configuration Management (Chef, Puppet or Ansible preferred) Continuous Integration Tools (Jenkins preferred)
• Experience in handling large production deployments and infrastructure.
• DevOps based infrastructure and application deployments experience.
• Working knowledge of the AWS network architecture including designing VPN solutions between regions and subnets
• Hands-on knowledge with the AWS AMI architecture including the development of machine templates and blueprints
• He/she should be able to validate that the environment meets all security and compliance controls.
• Good working knowledge of AWS services such as Messaging, Application Services, Migration Services, Cost Management Platform.
• Proven written and verbal communication skills.
• Understands and can serve as the technical team lead to oversee the build of the Cloud environment based on customer requirements.
• Previous NOC experience.
• Client Facing Experience with excellent Customer Communication and Documentation Skills