Advanced Specialist, DevOps & SRE

Pearson; BLOOMINGTON (MN); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 148,000; Full time

Job summary

Pearson is seeking an experienced Infrastructure and Cloud Operations engineer to own the cloud platform serving GED Testing Service candidates and data. You will manage AKS, Terraform, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and CI/CD pipelines, driving reliability and scalable deployments in a largely remote role.

You will collaborate with a senior contractor and security teams to ensure ISO 27001/27701 compliance, logging, backups, and disaster recovery, while sharing knowledge across the team to reduce

Qualifications

• 5+ years in DevOps, platform engineering or SRE with independent ownership of cloud infrastructure.
• Strong Microsoft Azure skills: AKS, networking, Key Vault, Application Gateway or similar ingress patterns.
• Hands-on experience with SQL Server in Azure (Managed Instance or equivalent): backups and monitoring.
• Terraform with disciplined plan/apply practices and remote state.
• Kubernetes operations: workloads, ingress, secrets, upgrades and persistent storage.
• Ability to mentor peers and transfer knowledge with a senior contractor.

Responsibilities

• Operate and troubleshoot AKS clusters, upgrades, deployments, and Azure infrastructure
• Maintain Terraform for networking, gateways, firewalls and registry
• Build and improve Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines and incident response
• Keep Azure SQL Managed Instance healthy with backups and monitoring
• Support secure analytics patterns and data access via Tableau
• Ensure security hygiene: audits, vulnerability management, and disaster recovery

Skills

DevOps

Platform engineering

SRE

Azure cloud ownership

Azure AKS

Tools

AKS

Terraform

Docker/ACR

Key Vault

Application Gateway

Front Door

Azure SQL Managed Instance

Splunk

New Relic

Tableau

Spring Boot

Angular

Job description

GED Testing Service builds and operates the technology behind the GED high school equivalency credential: a student-facing portal, admin tools, mobile apps, and integrations with Pearson VUE for exam scheduling and Kibo for e-commerce. We are a joint venture between Pearson and the American Council on Education. Our platform runs on Microsoft Azure , with core workloads on Kubernetes (AKS) and production data on Azure SQL Managed Instance .

What you'll do

Platform and reliability

• Operate and troubleshoot AKS clusters: upgrades, deployments, ingress, and the supporting Azure infrastructure across production, staging and lower environments
• Maintain and extend Terraform for networking, Application Gateway, Azure Firewall, Front Door, Key Vault and container registry
• Build and improve Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines, support zero-downtime deployments, and take part in production incident response

Data platform (high priority)

• Keep our Azure SQL Managed Instance healthy: backups, monitoring, capacity, and operational confidence that production data is protected
• Support secure analytics patterns that make data available to Tableau without exposing PII

Security and compliance

• Provide technical evidence for audits, ISO 27001/27701 and client security questionnaires: encryption, access, logging, backups and platform controls
• Own day-to-day security hygiene: vulnerability management, access certification, certificate lifecycle, and coordination of penetration tests and disaster recovery exercises

Partnership

• Document and transfer knowledge about the system so the team is not dependent on any one person

What you bring

Required

• 5+ years in DevOps, platform engineering or SRE, including independent ownership of cloud infrastructure
• Strong Microsoft Azure skills: AKS, networking, Key Vault, Application Gateway or similar ingress patterns
• Hands-on experience with SQL Server in Azure (Managed Instance or equivalent): backups, monitoring, performance and operational troubleshooting
• Terraform with disciplined plan/apply practices and remote state
• Kubernetes operations: workloads, ingress, secrets, upgrades and persistent storage
• Ability to partner with a senior contractor on knowledge transfer in both directions, learning the existing system before changing it, and mentoring peers on reliability and automation practices

Strongly prefer

• Minneapolis area, or able to come into the office regularly at the start of the role
• Familiarity with security audits, questionnaires and control frameworks (ISO 27001/27701, StateRAMP or similar)
• Experience designing secure analytics access patterns using ETL, reporting stores or other controlled approaches
• Regulated or high-availability environments (education, assessment, healthcare, fintech)

Our stack

• AKS
• Terraform
• Docker/ACR
• Key Vault
• Redis
• Application Gateway
• Front Door
• Splunk
• New Relic
• Tableau
• Spring Boot
• Angular

Why this role

• Real ownership of a platform serving live candidates, including the database behind them
• Breadth beyond Kubernetes: SQL Managed Instance health, security, analytics architecture and legacy cleanup all matter here
• Deep context from an experienced contractor who knows GEDTS inside and out, with the expectation that you become a second owner of it

Location and availability

Full-time, primarily remote. We would like you in the Minneapolis office about once a week for the first few months, easing toward fully remote over time. Minneapolis-based candidates are a strong plus, but we will consider strong remote applicants.

This is not a traditional pager rotation, but you will need to be reasonably reachable via Slack outside business hours when production issues arise. Coverage is shared with the development team and the existing contractor.

Compensation

at Pearson is influenced by factors including skill set, experience, and location.

The full-time salary range for this role is $120,000 – $148,000. This position is eligible to participate in an annual incentive program. Information on benefits can be found here.

Applications will be accepted through 10th November 2026. This window may be extended depending on business needs.

Who we are:

At Pearson, our purpose is simple: to help people realize the life they imagine through learning. We believe that every learning opportunity is a chance for a personal breakthrough. We are the world's lifelong learning company. For us, learning isn't just what we do. It's who we are. To learn more: We are Pearson.

Pearson is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a member of E-Verify. Employment decisions are based on qualifications, merit and business need. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other group protected by law. We actively seek qualified candidates who are protected veterans and individuals with disabilities as defined under VEVRAA and Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

If you are an individual with a disability and are unable or limited in your ability to use or access our career site as a result of your disability, you may request reasonable accommodations by emailing [e-mail].

Job: Infrastructure and Cloud Operations

Job Family: TECHNOLOGY