Lead System Engineering - Database Architecture and Engineering

AT&T; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

AT&T is seeking a Lead Systems Engineer to design, develop, and support automated, secure, database-ready infrastructure across AWS, Outposts, Azure, and hybrid environments. The role emphasizes hands-on leadership, automation, and collaboration with database, cloud, security, and operations teams.

The incumbent will drive Terraform-based solutions, CI/CD pipelines, and standardized deployment patterns, enabling scalable database platforms while maintaining compliance and reliability.

Qualifications

• 5+ years delivering Infrastructure-as-Code solutions using Terraform in production.
• 5+ years building or supporting CI/CD workflows with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or similar.
• Strong hands-on experience developing and maintaining Terraform modules.
• 5+ years experience with AWS services (EC2, EBS, IAM, KMS, SSM, VPC).
• Scripting or programming experience with Bash, Python, PowerShell, or similar.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain reusable automation for database-ready infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and hybrid environments.
• Lead technical work within the Database Architecture and Engineering team; coordinate cross-team efforts.
• Execute reviews, PR validation, release planning, and version management for shared modules and workflows.
• Ensure security, compliance, and operational readiness across automation pipelines.
• Provide technical leadership without direct people management and coach engineers on IaC practices.

Skills

Terraform

GitHub Actions

AWS

Linux

Python

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Security

Tools

Terraform modules

CI/CD tools

Job description

This position requires office presence of a minimum of 5 days per week and is only located in the location(s) posted. No relocation is offered.

AT&T will not hire any applicants for this position who require employer sponsorship now or in the future.

Join AT&T and reimagine the communications and technologies that connect the world. The Technology Services organization is responsible for advancing information technology performance and delivering solutions with a focus on maximizing ROI, increasing efficiency and enhancing the experience of end users. Guided by experienced leaders, Corporate Systems seamlessly integrate with advanced Technology and Operations to drive our enterprise forward. Our Systems Reliability and Software Delivery teams are unwavering in their commitment to excellence, ensuring every solution is robust and efficient. When you step into a career with AT&T, you won't just imagine the future, you'll create it.

About the team:

The DAE team designs, develops, and maintains standardized automation for enterprise database infrastructure. The team supports database platforms such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, DB2, Informix, and SAP-related database environments across public cloud, private cloud, AWS Outposts, and hybrid platforms.

The team’s work includes:

• Developing reusable Terraform modules and GitHub Actions workflows.
• Provisioning database-ready compute, storage, networking, identity, security, backup, and monitoring components.
• Creating standardized database deployment patterns and platform guardrails.
• Supporting cloud migrations, database onboarding, and modernization initiatives.
• Automating image creation, deployment validation, lifecycle management, and decommissioning.
• Integrating database infrastructure with enterprise identity, secrets management, certificate management, backup, observability, audit, and compliance services.
• Troubleshooting infrastructure and automation issues across multiple database technologies and cloud environments.
• Improving engineering practices through technical reviews, documentation, knowledge sharing, and reusable solutions.

What you'll do:

The Lead Systems Engineer will provide hands‑on technical leadership within the Database Architecture and Engineering team (DAE). The role is responsible for designing, developing, testing, and supporting reusable automation that provisions secure, standardized, and database‑ready infrastructure across AWS, AWS Outposts, Azure, and hybrid environments.

This is an individual‑contributor role with responsibility for coordinating technical work, improving engineering deliverables, resolving complex cross‑team issues, and coaching other engineers. The Lead Systems Engineer will work closely with database engineering, cloud platform, architecture, security, migration, backup, monitoring, and operational support teams to deliver resilient and supportable database platform capabilities.

Infrastructure as Code and Automation

• Design, develop, test, and maintain reusable Terraform modules for database‑ready infrastructure.
• Build and support GitHub Actions workflows that automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration, validation, and teardown.
• Develop automation for EC2 instances, virtual machines, storage, encryption, networking, security groups, IAM roles, identity integration, and supporting database services.
• Create modules that support multiple database products while allowing product‑specific compute, storage, filesystem, networking, and operating‑system requirements.
• Maintain common automation components that can be reused across Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and other supported database platforms.
• Improve module reliability through input validation, dependency management, error handling, logging, testing, and rerun‑safe deployment behavior.
• Support migration from legacy pipelines and locally managed scripts to standardized GitHub‑and Terraform‑based workflows.
• Participate in code reviews, pull‑request validation, release planning, and version management for shared modules and deployment workflows.

Cloud and Systems Engineering

• Engineer database‑ready infrastructure across AWS, AWS Outposts, Azure, and hybrid environments.
• Configure compute, storage, filesystems, networking, encryption, operating‑system settings, and supporting agents according to database platform requirements.
• Apply Linux engineering practices related to system configuration, package management, storage management, performance tuning, service management, and troubleshooting.
• Support image creation and lifecycle processes, including validation, regional distribution, ownership, versioning, patching, and retirement.
• Develop and maintain patterns for account, subscription, region, availability zone, subnet, routing, security group, and tagging requirements.
• Support secure administrative access through enterprise identity services, role‑based access controls, session management, and least‑privilege design.
• Integrate infrastructure with certificate, secrets, monitoring, logging, backup, recovery, service‑management, and compliance capabilities.
• Evaluate technical dependencies and identify reusable solutions that reduce platform‑specific customization.

Database Platform Enablement

• Translate database product requirements into standardized infrastructure modules and deployment configurations.
• Work with database subject‑matter experts to define processor, memory, disk, filesystem, network, operating‑system, backup, monitoring, and high‑availability requirements.
• Support infrastructure patterns for single‑node, clustered, replicated, and disaster‑recovery configurations where required.
• Ensure modules produce infrastructure that is ready for database software installation, configuration, validation, and operational handoff.
• Assist with the development of onboarding patterns for new database technologies and versions.
• Participate in database migration readiness activities by identifying infrastructure prerequisites, technical constraints, and deployment dependencies.
• Help define consistent handoff criteria between infrastructure provisioning, database installation, migration execution, and ongoing operational support.

Security, Compliance, and Operational Readiness

• Incorporate security and compliance controls into infrastructure automation from the beginning of the design process.
• Implement encryption, key management, secrets handling, identity controls, network segmentation, logging, and audit requirements in reusable modules.
• Work with security and compliance teams to evaluate requirements for regulated and restricted database workloads.
• Help ensure that infrastructure patterns support least privilege, separation of duties, traceability, standardized lifecycle management, and auditable access.
• Integrate automated deployments with enterprise backup, monitoring, vulnerability management, logging, and service‑management processes.
• Develop validation checks that confirm infrastructure meets defined technical and operational requirements before handoff.
• Identify operational gaps and work across teams to establish ownership, escalation paths, support procedures, and remediation approaches.
• Support vulnerability remediation, patching readiness, platform lifecycle management, and retirement of obsolete components.

Troubleshooting and Operational Support

• Serve as a senior technical resource for complex infrastructure, automation, pipeline, access, networking, storage, and deployment issues.
• Analyze failed Terraform plans and applies, GitHub workflow failures, cloud service errors, and operating‑system configuration problems.
• Diagnose issues involving IAM, identity federation, OIDC, security groups, routing, DNS, KMS, EBS, SSM, certificates, secrets, and service integrations.
• Develop durable fixes rather than relying on repeated manual workarounds.
• Improve troubleshooting information through meaningful logs, validation messages, runbooks, and support documentation.
• Coordinate resolution of issues that cross database, infrastructure, cloud platform, security, and operations teams.
• Participate in recurring engineering standups, backlog reviews, technical working sessions, and incident discussions.
• Track assigned work through completion and clearly communicate status, risks, dependencies, and blockers.

Technical Leadership and Continuous Improvement

• Provide technical leadership within the team without requiring direct people‑management responsibility.
• Coordinate a small team or focused engineering workstream when needed.
• Help break complex platform objectives into implementable technical stories, tasks, dependencies, and acceptance criteria.
• Identify opportunities to improve engineering quality, delivery efficiency, reliability, maintainability, and operational resilience.
• Recommend new techniques and tools when they provide measurable improvements over existing practices.
• Establish and promote standards for Terraform development, source control, pipeline design, module structure, testing, documentation, and release management.
• Balance immediate delivery needs with long‑term maintainability and platform strategy.
• Remain current on cloud infrastructure, Infrastructure as Code, database platforms, automation, security, and observability trends.
• Deliver complex assignments reliably while maintaining high‑quality and resilient outputs.

Collaboration, Communication, and Coaching

• Foster collaboration beyond the immediate team by building productive working relationships across engineering and support organizations.
• Resolve cross‑team technical issues involving unclear ownership, competing requirements, integration dependencies, and operational handoffs.
• Communicate technical designs, risks, constraints, and recommendations clearly to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Provide constructive feedback through design reviews, code reviews, working sessions, and implementation discussions.
• Coach less‑experienced engineers on Infrastructure as Code, cloud services, automation, Linux, troubleshooting, and database infrastructure practices.
• Share technical knowledge through demonstrations, documentation, examples, reusable code, and recorded working sessions.
• Contribute to a team culture that values transparency, practical problem‑solving, engineering discipline, and shared ownership.
• Maintain clear documentation in shared repositories and collaboration platforms so that processes do not depend on individual knowledge.

What you’ll bring:

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years experience delivering Infrastructure-as-Code solutions using Terraform and automated deployment pipelines in a production environment.
• Demonstrated experience providing technical leadership within an engineering team or coordinating a focused technical workstream.
• Strong hands‑on experience developing and maintaining Terraform modules.
• 5+ years experience building or supporting CI/CD workflows with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or a comparable platform.
• Strong understanding of Infrastructure as Code design, including reusable modules, variables, outputs, state management, dependencies, versioning, testing, and release practices.
• 5+ years experience with AWS infrastructure services such as EC2, EBS, IAM, KMS, SSM, VPC, subnets, security groups, routing, DNS, Secrets Manager, and CloudWatch.
• Strong Linux systems engineering and troubleshooting skills.
• Scripting or programming experience with Bash, Python, PowerShell, or a comparable language.
• Experience diagnosing complex infrastructure, automation, configuration, networking, access, or deployment issues.
• Working knowledge of enterprise security principles, including least privilege, role‑based access, encryption, secrets management, network segmentation, logging, and auditability.
• Experience working with source control, branching strategies, pull requests, peer reviews, and collaborative software development practices.
• Ability to translate technical requirements into implementable engineering stories, acceptance criteria, test cases, and documentation.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate across organizational boundaries and resolve issues involving multiple technical teams.
• Ability to deliver complex assignments independently while maintaining quality, resilience, and operational supportability.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with AWS Outposts or other hybrid cloud infrastructure.
• Experience developing automation for database-ready EC2 instances or virtual machines.
• Working knowledge of one or more enterprise database platforms, such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, DB2, Informix, SAP HANA, or SAP ASE.
• Experience defining database infrastructure requirements for compute, memory, storage, filesystems, networking, backup, monitoring, and high availability.
• Experience integrating automated deployments with enterprise backup and recovery platforms.
• Experience with observability technologies such as Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch, or enterprise monitoring platforms.
• Experience with enterprise identity platforms such as Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory, AWS IAM Identity Center, or federated access solutions.
• Experience with OIDC–based authentication for automation workflows.
• Experience with HashiCorp Cloud Platform, Terraform Enterprise, or centralized Terraform state and policy management.
• Knowledge of AMI or virtual–machine image creation, validation, distribution, patching, and lifecycle management.
• Experience with enterprise certificate and secrets management solutions.
• Knowledge of database migration, replication, clustering, high availability, and disaster–recovery concepts.
• Experience supporting regulated workloads subject to controls such as SOX, PCI, HIPAA, or similar standards.
• Experience supporting large‑scale cloud migration, platform modernization, or database transformation programs.
• Cloud, Terraform, Linux, security, or database‑related certifications.