Cloud Engineer

United States, North Carolina, Charlotte

The Cloud Engineer will implement, secure, and manage private and public cloud infrastructure. Collaborates with developers to ensure cloud-native workloads are deployed according to IT best practices for security, governance, identity and access management and monitoring. Collaborates with infrastructure teams to ensure the high levels of resilience (failover, workload balancing, backup & recovery, disaster recovery, vulnerability management) in traditional application deployments are carried over to software-defined network, storage and compute implementations in cloud environments. Responsible for transition of application deployments from traditional network, storage, compute, virtual server, and application constructs to cloud-native platforms. Integrates cloud compute environments with traditional data center services. Monitors and optimizes cloud implementations for technical and cost efficiencies. Provides project support for requirements gathering design, planning, coordination and implementation of releases, upgrades, or changes to the Premier computing environment. Serves as an escalation point for troubleshooting problems, and the rapid restoration of production service incidents. Serves as a subject matter expert on project teams and works closely with internal and external customers and vendors to provide proposals and supporting analysis for operational improvement and ongoing project requirements. Possesses an enterprise view of the business environment and the business applications running on the systems being managed. Provides day-to-day guidance and coaching to Administrators and Associates.

Key Responsibilities

Administration and Support - 30%

• Provide hands-on support for private/public cloud and container-based platforms. Provide 24-hour on-call support for incident management and service restoration on a rotational basis.
• Ensure platform availability with proper monitoring of key events and alerting to appropriate service owners for conditions that can result in degradation or downtime of services.
• Provision workloads on appropriate compute platforms.
• Assist development teams with self-service and API call challenges.
• Review incident trends and proactively register problems. Plan and implement changes to address risks and inefficiencies.
• Establish standards, document change procedures, coordinate planned maintenance, and communicate impacts to stakeholders.
• Train others in proper procedures for handling issues. Teach and train automation skills utilizing shell scripts and scheduling tools.
• Maintain and update relevant components of the IT disaster recovery plan. Perform recovery testing as part of an overall disaster recovery planning process.

Workload and Cost Optimization - 25%

• Ensure all workloads are on the correct platform based on product revenue, criticality, performance profile, and cost.
• Migrate workloads between platforms as needed.
• Provide resource consumption reporting (for all public/private/cloud container platforms) to TechOps and business teams on a monthly basis. Review and refine reporting for maximum impact.
• Adapt self-service and manual provisioning interfaces and processes to drive the provisioning of resources on the most business and cost-appropriate platforms.
• Establish processes to identify over-provisioning of resources, automatically reclaim resources, and notify stakeholders.
• Implement controls that ensure individual workload consumption is either approved by business stakeholders or constrained by compute pool resource limits.
• Support efforts to establish "show back" of all costs associated with internal and external cloud and container platforms.

DevOps Integration & Technology Assessment - 20%

• Partner with development team leads and team members to support velocity in continuous integration and delivery process.
• Maintain awareness of and proficiency in development team CI/CD processes and tools.
• Ensure software development pipeline, testing, code repository, and issue tracking systems integrate well with cloud and container platform services.
• Work with Development iteration teams in an agile environment including but not limited to attending stand-ups, product meetings and involvement with sprint tasks.
• Identify applications on traditional infrastructure that could be re-expressed in cloud environments and develop priorities for migration based on level of effort and cost benefit.
• Play a key role in the technical deployment for new application initiatives, beginning at the business requirements stage, to determine and deliver technical components necessary to build and deploy the new application.
• Ensure technical and architectural requirements are incorporated appropriately within new system initiatives.
• Play a key role in technology evaluation, selection, integration and implementation of new systems architectures, tools, and techniques.
• Review and analyze vendor-supplied utilities, software packages and engineering releases for the environment.
• Attend vendor conferences and presentations to maintain current and develop new business relevant skills.

Cloud Security - 15%

• Continuously seek new means and methods to improve the security posture of all cloud and container environments.
• Partner with security team to document current methods and explore new means to perform vulnerability assessment (VA) in cloud environments.
• Regularly review all "build" templates to ensure current patch levels, minimum services enabled, and acceptable VA scan results.
• Ensure all workloads have network isolation from each other through segmentation methods approved by the Network Manager and Security Operations VP.
• Ensure the Network and Security teams have all possible visibility to network traffic and "net flow" data in cloud & container environments.
• Drive continuous improvement in patch management processes and vulnerability management policy.
• Implement role-based access privileges in each platform that ensure user roles have the least possible access needed to perform their business function.
• Validate access requests with appropriate managers and optimize group membership-based access methods.

Relationship Management - 10%

• Work with service providers to maintain current implementations of hardware, software, and services to ensure maximum value, performance, and availability.
• Identify risks and gaps across the technology stack and escalate them into vendor governance as needed.
• Document, develop and maintain effective working relations with users, vendors, and other department personnel.

Required Qualifications

Work Experience: Years of Applicable Experience - 2 or more years

Education: High School Diploma or GED (Required)

Preferred Qualifications

Skills:

Cloud Platform Management

• Experience with a major cloud provider such as Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. This would include understanding networking, different resource types, Backup and Disaster Recovery controls, Cost Optimization, Deployment of Infrastructure as Code, Troubleshooting.

Compute Stacks:

• Knowledge of Windows & Linux operating systems, file systems and system administration; knowledge of container run-time and orchestration platforms (Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes).

Automation and Orchestration:

• Ability to execute complex processes with a variety of variables, and direct multiple automated tasks in a specific order to deliver a complex outcome; can invoke cloud-based APIs such as RESTful interfaces.

Cloud Networking:

• Understand DNS, load balancers, web application firewalls, network access control lists, security groups, and VPN connectivity; leverage traditional network experts to drive mission-critical resiliency and security into software-defined networks.

Governance:

• Experience implementing processes to ensure effective and efficient use of cloud computing to enable and achieve business goals (cost containment, role-based access, cloud provider account management).

Scripting:

• Proficiency with Powershell, shell scripts, Ruby, Python, YAML, JavaScript.

Configuration Management:

• Ability to leverage a variety of configuration management interfaces (Cloudforms, AWS, Cloud formation/OpsWorks, Microsoft Azure Automation/Resource Manager, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Terraform).

Security:

• Proficiency with leveraging security policies, firewalls, encryption, security, and event management (SIEM) systems.

DevOps:

• Experience facilitating development teams' promotion of middleware, configurations, and code through test and production environments.

Financial Analysis:

• Understanding of cloud cost drivers (overt and "hidden") such as image size & storage capacity, usage duration, inter-service and egress traffic, and ability to create a TCO model for implementations.

Experience: 4 or more years of applicable experience

Education: Bachelor's degree

Additional Job Requirements:

• Remain in a stationary position for prolonged periods of time.
• Be adaptive and change priorities quickly; meet deadlines.
• Attention to detail.
• Operate computer programs and software.
• Ability to communicate effectively with audiences in person and in electronic formats.
• Day-to-day contact with others (co-workers and/or the public).
• Making independent decisions.
• Ability to work in a collaborative business environment in close quarters with peers and varying interruptions.

Working Conditions: Remote

Travel Requirements: Travel 1-20% within the US

Physical Demands: Sedentary: Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally, and/or a negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push, pull or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves remaining stationary most of the time. Jobs are sedentary if movement is required only occasionally, and all other sedentary criteria are met.

Premier's compensation philosophy is to ensure that compensation is reasonable, equitable, and competitive in order to attract and retain talented and highly skilled employees. Premier's internal salary range for this role is $64,000 - $118,000. Final salary is dependent upon several market factors including, but not limited to, departmental budgets, internal equity, education, unique skills/experience, and geographic location. Premier utilizes a wide-range salary structure to allow base salary flexibility within our ranges.

Employees also receive access to the following benefits:

• Health, dental, vision, life and disability insurance
• 401k retirement program
• Paid time off
• Participation in Premier's employee incentive plans
• Tuition reimbursement and professional development opportunities

Premier at a glance:

• Ranked #1 on Charlotte's Healthiest Employers list for 2019, 2020 and 2022, and 49th Healthiest Employer in America (2022)
• Named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute for the 13th year in a row
• The only company to be recognized by KLAS twice for Overall Healthcare Management Consulting.

Employees receive:

• Perks and discounts
• Access to on-site and online exercise classes
• Paid time off to volunteer in their communities

Premier is looking for smart, agile individuals like you to help us transform the healthcare industry. Here you will find critical thinkers who have the freedom to make an impact. Colleagues who share your thirst to learn more and do things better. Teammates committed to improving the health of a nation. See why incredible challenges require incredible people.

Premier is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to unlawful discrimination because of their age, race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, familial status, pregnancy status, genetic information, status as a victim of domestic violence, covered military or protected veteran status (e.g., status as a Vietnam Era veteran, disabled veteran, special disabled veteran, Armed Forces Serviced Medal veteran, recently separated veteran, or other protected veteran) disability, or any other applicable federal, state or local protected class, trait or status or that of persons with whom an applicant associates. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. In addition, as a federal contractor, Premier complies with government regulations, including affirmative action responsibilities, where they apply.

Premier also provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with a disability or those who have a sincerely held religious belief. If you need assistance in the application process, please reply to or contact Premier Recruiting at 704.816.5200.

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