Cloud Engineer

MetaCell, LLC; Italy; Remote; CAD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

MetaCell, LLC is seeking a full-time Cloud Engineer to design, build and operate secure Google Cloud infrastructure for scientific research platforms. This remote role requires deep GCP and Terraform expertise, strong security mindset and hands-on experience with containerized workloads in BigQuery, Cloud Run, Airflow and Kubernetes.

Occasional travel to Italy/UK/US may be required for team meetings. You will collaborate with researchers and engineers worldwide, own CI/CD pipelines, IAM,

Qualifications

• 5+ years designing and operating cloud infrastructure.
• Strong documentation with architecture diagrams and runbooks.
• Deep GCP knowledge including IAM and VPC networking.
• Experience with multi-environment Terraform modules and CI/CD promotion.

Responsibilities

• Design secure cloud architecture from requirements.
• Build and maintain GCP infra as code with Terraform and CI/CD pipelines.
• Manage IAM, VPC, org policies following least privilege principles.
• Run data workloads with BigQuery, Airflow, Cloud Run and containerized environments.
• Monitor security and platform health, respond to incidents, maintain runbooks.
• Review code and ensure quality of infrastructure code.
• Availability during PST hours or overlap for collaboration.
• Collaborate with researchers and teams worldwide.

Skills

Cloud engineering

GCP

Security mindset

CI/CD

Python scripting

Education

BSc / MSc in Software Engineering or Computer Science

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

GKE

GitHub Actions

BigQuery

Airflow

Cloud Run

IAM

Job description

(Fixed Term Contract / Full Time / Remote / PST Timezone)

We are looking for a talented full time Cloud Engineer to join our team on a fixed term contract, with an opportunity for renewal at the end of the contract. You will design, build and operate secure Google Cloud infrastructure for scientific research platforms used by researchers around the world. We are looking for someone with deep, hands-on GCP and Terraform experience, a strong security mindset, a proactive attitude and the desire to dive into the exciting neuroscience domain. This is a fully remote position, however meeting the team and traveling to Italy, the UK or US may be occasionally necessary.

Responsibilities

• Work with internal teams and external clients to turn requirements into secure, well documented cloud architecture.
• Build and maintain Google Cloud infrastructure as code with Terraform, and own the CI/CD pipelines that promote changes from Dev/QA to production.
• Manage IAM, networking, VPC Service Controls perimeters and organization policies following least privilege principles.
• Run data and compute workloads (BigQuery, Airflow, Batch, Cloud Run) and the containerized environments our scientific users rely on.
• Monitor security and platform health, respond to incidents, maintain runbooks and take part in the on-call rotation.
• Review code with peers and own the quality of infrastructure code.
• Availability during Pacific Standard Time (PST) working hours, or significant overlap with PST time zones, to ensure seamless communication and collaboration with internal teams and clients.
• 5+ years of experience designing, deploying and operating cloud-based infrastructure, with clear technical documentation skills (architecture diagrams, runbooks)
• Deep GCP experience and fundamentals: IAM, service accounts, org/folder/project hierarchy, VPC networking, GCS, BigQuery administration, Airflow, the Batch API and Cloud Run.
• Container orchestration & CI/CD: Kubernetes, GKE, and GitHub Actions or similar tools.
• Advanced Terraform: multi-environment modules, state management and CI/CD promotion from Dev/QA to production.
• VPC Service Controls and Access Context Manager : perimeter design, ingress/egress rules, access levels and troubleshooting violations.
• Security monitoring and incident response: Security Command Center, Cloud Monitoring alerts and Cloud Audit Logs.
• Docker, Python and Linux: building and securing container images, Python for automation and data workflows, and bash command line proficiency.
• Agentic engineering: hands-on proficiency with Claude Code or similar AI-assisted software development practices; demonstrated experience operating autonomous AI agents and agentic workflows.
• BSc / MSc in Software Engineering, Computer Science or a related technical field
• Identity federation: Workforce Identity Federation and IAP with external SAML/OIDC providers such as Login.gov, ID.me or InCommon.
• Research compute: custom Docker images (R, neuroimaging), Vertex AI Workbench, and Cloud Storage FUSE. Kasm/VDI experience is a plus.
• Assured Workloads: folder migration, org policy constraints and cleanly decommissioning legacy environments.
• Data-science and notebooks: Jupyter Notebook and JupyterHub, graph databases (Neo4j, Amazon Neptune), Apache Spark and Databricks.
• Frontend exposure: React and a frontend state manager (Redux, Jotai, Zustand or similar).
• Work remotely with flexible hours and a competitive salary
• Contribute to scientific open source software to advance life science research
• Work in a team of highly skilled engineers and with leading academic researchers around the world

About MetaCell

MetaCell software applications unlock the true value of life science data and models, including advanced simulations, collaborative morphology reconstruction and microscopy annotation, EEG and electrophysiology data. Working at the intersection of cutting edge life science and software engineering, we address the most challenging questions, from mechanisms of complex diseases that still elude us to the mysteries of the brain.