Job Description
Job Family Summary
The Cloud Engineer is a key element within the Rackspace support infrastructure and is expected to provide a high level of technical support to our customers via the phone, ticketing system, and automation. This role owns complex customer issues which may take several days or weeks to resolve and keeps our customers updated through every step of the process. Responsible for the support of internal and external customers on multiple platforms. Work with customers and other teams to troubleshoot customer environments to increase user satisfaction. Resolves customer issues, providing guidance and recommendations to increase efficiency and reduce customer incidents. Develops tooling and processes to drive and improve customer experience, creates playbooks, and providing mentoring on customer related issues to support teams. The Support Engineer is expected to take initiative and advise on potential pitfalls that a customer may encounter and suggest alternatives which may better serve the stability and security of the customer's solution. Keeps informed of emerging technologies. Responsible for adhering to company security policies and procedures and any other relevant policies and standards as directed.
Role-Specific Summary
The DevOps Cloud Engineer designs and manages solutions using public cloud technologies - AWS, GCP and Azure. This engineer develops support tools to assist with performance tuning and capacity planning and contributes to open source tools that assist in configuration management, deployment and operation of high- availability, high-performance applications. This role requires knowledge of Python (>=3.8), AWS Lambda, object oriented programming, test driven development, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Circle CI, etc), and Infrastructure as Code frameworks (Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK). Recommended experience includes familiarity with AWS DynamoDB, AWS API Gateway, AWS SDKs, Typescript, React, and Go.
Career Level Summary
- Requires specialized depth and/or breadth of expertise in own job discipline or field
- Leads others to solve complex problems
- Works independently, with guidance in only the most complex situations
- May provide functional leadership to teams or projects
Critical Competencies
- Systems Thinking: Enables optimum organizational efficiency by taking a whole systems approach and thinking across boundaries to identify which polices/processes should be standardized and which should differ
- Idea Creation: Examines new ideas of solutions, methods and products to ensure the potential and alignment with departmental and business goals
Key Responsibilities
- Technical point of escalation to the Cloud Support and Engineering teams; resolving customer issues, working in collaboration with partners across the business, as required
- Lead cross-functional business continuity/transformational projects and customer engagements (both technical and non-technical), delivering key objectives for the Organization
- Advise leadership in setting and executing technological strategy to ensure Rackspace remain head of industry
- Proactively assess, propose, and implement enhancements to system architecture, problem management, fleet management, process improvement, reporting, product integration and customer infrastructure
- Lead Workload/Workforce Management and Optimization related tasks
- Review technical training for all Rackers supporting Rackspace Supported Cloud Products
- Coach, mentor and assists Rackers across the business
- Provide technical expertise underpinning communications targeting a range of stakeholders - from individual contributors to leaders across the business
- Collaborate with Account Managers and Business Development Consultants to build strong customer relationships
- Collaborate and share knowledge with other Engineers on the support floor
Person Specification
Knowledge
- Advanced knowledge of Cloud Platform Products such as AWS, Azure, GCP, or Openstack
- Advanced skills in at least one of the following languages: Node.js, Python, PHP, Ruby, and Java
- Advanced skills with git and git workflows
- Advanced skills in leveraging CI and CD tools to automate testing and deployment
- Advanced knowledge of Linux or Windows OS, including but not limited to: Server Failover Clustering, Active Directory, IIS
- Broad knowledge of the following with deep knowledge of some: PHP, Python, Ruby, Javascript, Memcached, LAMP, nginx, node.js, nosql, Varnish
- Strong web programming and scripting ability
- Strong knowledge of designing, building, implementing, analyzing, and troubleshooting distributed, highly available systems
- Strong automation skills with at least one configuration management system such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, or other such tools
- Strong knowledge of software development methodologies including code profiling, regression testing, and continuous integration
- Strong knowledge of Project Management methodologies
- Strong understanding of services and protocols, configuration, management, and troubleshooting of hosting environments, including web servers, databases, caching, and database services
- Strong knowledge in the application of current and emerging network software and hardware technology and protocols
- VMWare Platform
- Strong knowledge of the vSphere platform
- Proficient networking and NSX administration skills
- Proficient working knowledge of fibre channel SANS, NFS and vSAN
- Proficient knowledge of vROPS/vRLI
- Proficient working knowledge of Client/DELL Server hardware platforms
- Proficient knowledge/troubleshooting of Disaster Recovery technologies (e.g. ZERTO, SRM)
- Hyper-V Platform
- Strong knowledge of the Hyper-V platform
- Proficient networking skills
- Proficient working knowledge of fibre channel SANS, NFS, vSAN, DAS, SMB, and Storage Spaces Direct
- Proficient knowledge of vROPS
- Proficient working knowledge of Client/DELL Server hardware platforms
- Proficient knowledge/troubleshooting of Disaster Recovery technologies (e.g. Hyper-V Replication)
- Requires specialized depth and/or breadth of expertise in own job discipline or field
- Interprets internal/external business challenges and recommends best practices to improve products, processes or services
Skills
- Passionate about technology and has a desire to constantly expand technical knowledge
- Detail-oriented in documenting information and able to own customer issues through resolution
- Able to handle multiple tasks and prioritize work under pressure
- Demonstrate sound problem-solving skills coupled with a desire to take on responsibility
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, both highly technical and non-technical
- Ability to communicate technical issues to nontechnical and technical audiences
- Fluency in multiple languages is a plus
Education
Required
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Management Information Systems, or a related technical field
- At the Manager's discretion, 4 years of additional related experience may substitute for the degree requirement; if substitution allowed, regional equivalent to High School Diploma is required.
Certifications
- Requires 3+ Azure Certifications for Azure Specialists
- Requires AWS Master Status and for AWS Specialists
- Requires 3 Microsoft Certifications for Hyper-V Specialists: Azure Fundamentals, Software Defined Storage, Software Defined Networking
- Requires VCP-DCV Certification for VMware Specialists
- Prefer relevant technical certifications around Red Hat, MySQL, CCIA, CCEE, CCEA, CCA, MCSE/MCITP, MCSA, VCP-DCV, vRealize Operations, NXSand/or vSAN badge certifications
Experience
Required
- 8 11 years of technical engineering and administration experience with a minimum of 5 - 6 years commercial experience as either a LAMP stack software developer and/or systems administrator
- 3 years of current commercial experience as a Cloud Engineer working with a high-traffic site
- Experience with high-availability, high-performance, open source web technologies
- Experience automating and orchestrating workloads across multiple public cloud providers
- Experience with cloud platforms, open source databases and caching layers
- Experience working in a containerized environment (Docker/LXC)
Physical Demands
- General office environment: no special physical demands required
- May require long periods sitting and viewing a computer monitor
- May require work on non-traditional shifts
- Schedule flexibility to include working weekends and/or evenings and holidays as required by the business for 24/7 operations
- A willingness to work weekends and/or holidays when required as the business dictates
Travel
- Occasional domestic travel, less than 10%
