Principal DevOps Engineer

A cover letter is required for consideration for this position. In order for the Career Portal system to accept a cover letter, please include a cover letter as the first page of your resume document. The cover letter should specifically address why you are interested in this position and describe specific skills and experiences you have and directly relate them to the responsibilities of, and qualification for, this position.

Working at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) means being a part of a team committed to discovery and understanding. It means working for the world's largest academic social science survey and research organization, and doing work that really matters to social science in the public interest. The Survey Research Center (SRC) is a collaborative community that conducts cutting-edge research that focus on critical societal issues such as aging, health disparities, and social networks. This position is in the Technical Services Group (TSG) within the Survey Research Operations(SRO). SRO is the operations branch of the Survey Research Center (SRC) at the ISR.

In TSG, we are passionate about leveraging technology to build innovative solutions that support the entire data collection process. We are seeking a highly experienced, hands-on, forward-thinking Principal DevOps Engineer to lead the design, implementation, and optimization of our CI/CD pipelines, application environments, and automation initiatives. As a Principal DevOps Engineer, you will set technical direction, implement, mentor engineers across the organization, and drive best practices to ensure robust, scalable, and secure systems. Your expertise will be critical in bridging development and operations, accelerating innovation, and guaranteeing high availability of our services. This is a hybrid position, and you will be based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Architecture, Development and Technical Leadership

• Drive automation efforts for deployment, monitoring, and security
• Develop and enforce DevOps best practices, standards, and strategies organization-wide
• Architect and develop robust, high-availability, and high-performance cloud and on-prem infrastructure

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

• Lead the evolution and maintenance of CI/CD pipelines to enable rapid and secure software delivery
• Ensure build and release processes are highly reliable, repeatable, and scalable

Infrastructure as Code & Application Services

• Champion Infrastructure as Code (IaC), developing reusable modules and template
• Architect and deploy robust application services, including advanced load balancing, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and Single Sign-On (SSO) services

AI Monitoring and Security

• Oversee systems performance, reliability, and security via monitoring and logging
• Integrate security best practices through DevSecOps automation
• Advise development and operations teams on best practices for integrating AI/ML solutions

Collaboration and Mentoring

• Serve as a technical mentor and advisor to DevOps, IT, and engineering teams
• Collaborate closely with developers, architects, security, and business stakeholders

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience
• Proven track record of leading complex DevOps and site reliability initiatives as a Principal DevOps Engineer
• 10+ years (5+ years for Senior level) of relevant hands-on experience in DevOps, Site Reliability, or Cloud Engineering
• 10+ years (5+ years for Senior level) of expertise in automation, CI/CD (Azure DevOps), containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Strong background in DevSecOps, with demonstrated proficiency in implementing SAST, SCA, secret management and architecting end-to-end security automation
• Strong background in application performance monitoring, log analysis, and alerting using Splunk or related observability tools
• Strong understanding of networking, load balancing, and IT infrastructure concepts
• Proficient with scripting languages (Python, Powershell, Bash, etc.)
• Experience mentoring technical teams and leading complex projects
• Excellent problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supervising DevOps teams
• Experience with Azure Cloud computing
• Experience with AI integration and security

Monday-Friday, days.

Opening may be filled at the Solution Architect Lead or Solution Architect Senior level, depending on depth and breadth of experience and qualifications.

• Positions at the Lead level will be filled at the $135,000 - 155,000 salary range.
• Positions at the Senior level will be filled at the $114,000 - 134,000 salary range.