Sr. DevOps Engineer - Computing Services

Sr. DevOps Engineer - Computing Services

Company:
Carnegie Mellon University

Job Location:
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Category:
Software Engineer/Programmer

Type:
Full-Time

The Senior DevOps Engineer designs, builds, and maintains secure, reliable, and scalable application platforms and delivery pipelines. This role partners closely with engineering, security, and IT operations teams to improve the full software delivery lifecycle—planning, building, testing, deploying, and supporting services—through automation, infrastructure-as-code, and modern DevOps practices. The Senior DevOps Engineer also contributes hands-on engineering work, technical assessments, operational documentation, and continuous improvement initiatives across hybrid cloud and on-prem environments.

Key Responsibilities:

Platform Engineering & Operations

• Design, implement, and operate resilient infrastructure and application platforms across hybrid cloud and on-prem environments.
• Ensure platforms are secure, reliable, scalable, and cost-aware; identify and remediate operational risks.
• Install, upgrade, troubleshoot, and maintain internal and third-party applications and supporting services.
• Develop and maintain operational runbooks, standards, and technical documentation.

Automation & CI/CD:

• Design, build, and maintain CI/CD pipelines to automate build, test, release, and deployment processes (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD).
• Implement GitOps and automated deployment patterns to improve consistency and reduce manual effort.
• Drive continuous improvement by identifying repetitive tasks and automating workflows to simplify them.

Infrastructure as Code & Configuration Management:

• Build and maintain infrastructure using IaC and configuration management tooling (e.g., Terraform, Ansible, Puppet).
• Standardize environments and configurations to improve reliability, auditability, and delivery speed.
• Manage software/artifact repositories (e.g., Artifactory, Nexus) to support versioning, release management, and deployments.

Containers & Orchestration:

• Deploy and operate container platforms and workloads (e.g., Kubernetes, OpenShift).
• Establish best practices for container lifecycle, configuration, observability, and operational support.

Collaboration & Delivery:

• Partner with development teams to ensure changes are tested, integrated, and deployed efficiently and safely.
• Participate in technical assessments and solution design, including feasibility, compatibility, and effort estimates.
• Manage multiple priorities across teams and stakeholders; communicate clearly about risks, timelines, and operational readiness.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• 5+ years of experience in DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, systems engineering, or related roles.
• Strong Linux and/or Windows systems experience and proven troubleshooting skills in distributed environments.
• Hands-on experience building and operating CI/CD pipelines and modern software delivery workflows.
• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code and configuration management (e.g., Terraform, Ansible, Puppet).
• Experience operating containerized workloads and orchestration platforms (e.g., Kubernetes or OpenShift).
• Proficiency in scripting/automation (e.g., Python, Bash, PowerShell).
• Demonstrated ability to produce clear documentation (runbooks, standards, how-to guides) and improve operational processes.
• A combination of education and relevant experience from which comparable knowledge is demonstrated may be considered.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in higher education, research computing, or similarly complex multi-tenant environments.
• Familiarity with security/compliance frameworks and practices (e.g., NIST, FERPA, HIPAA) as they apply to IT services.
• Experience with IT service management practices (e.g., ITIL/ITSM) and service improvement methods (e.g., Lean/Six Sigma).
• Experience implementing observability practices (logging, metrics, tracing) and operational readiness standards.

Core Competencies:

• Systems thinking and operational excellence mindset
• Strong problem-solving and incident-response skills
• Clear communication and stakeholder collaboration
• Ability to prioritize and deliver across multiple efforts
• Strong engineering discipline (automation-first, testable, repeatable, documented)

Location

Pittsburgh, PA

Job Function
Software/Applications Development/Engineering

Position Type
Staff - Regular

Full Time/Part time
Full time

Pay Basis
Salary