Manager, Technical Cloud

NJ TRANSIT; Newark (NJ); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive Family Health Insurance

Flexible Spending Account

Life Insurance

Paid Leave

Tuition Assistance

Pre-Tax Commuter Benefits Plan

Retirement Plans

401(a) Employer Contribution

401(k) Company match

457(b) Deferred Savings Plan

Job summary

NJ TRANSIT is seeking a Senior Cloud & Infrastructure Engineer to oversee AWS and on-prem VMware, shaping migration road map and ensuring uptime. You will collaborate with application teams and operations to prioritize workloads and maintain secure, scalable infrastructure.

The role requires hands-on AWS, VMware, IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation), and strong leadership to drive modernization, incident response, capacity planning, and cost governance in a small team.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 10+ years supervisory IT experience.
• 5+ years cloud/virtualization engineering with 2+ years in leadership.
• Strong hands-on AWS experience with core services (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, RDS, CloudWatch).
• Solid experience managing VMware environments (vSphere/ESXi).
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred) and scripting (Python, Bash, or PowerShell).

Responsibilities

• Oversee AWS cloud services and on-prem VMware footprint, ensuring operational stability and guiding migration roadmap.
• Work with application teams to understand workloads and prioritize migration candidates.
• Collaborate with transportation operations teams to ensure uptime, reliability, and safety of critical systems.
• Coordinate with AWS, VMware, and consulting vendors for support and solution design.
• Lead incident response for cloud and on-prem environments, reducing MTTR and improving reliability.
• Ensure capacity planning for AWS and VMware resources; introduce SRE practices.
• Partner with security teams to implement identity controls, network segmentation, and logging.
• Establish governance: accounts, RBAC, tagging, and audit readiness.
• Support compliance efforts (SOC 2, ISO 27001).
• Track cloud costs and advise leadership on cost tradeoffs.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Problem Solving

Cloud strategy

Cloud security

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related area

Tools

AWS

Terraform

CloudFormation

Python

PowerShell

vSphere/ESXi

IAM

CI/CD

Job description

Move forward with us! At NJ TRANSIT, you'll join us in transforming the third-largest transportation agency in North America. We are committed to delivering safe, reliable service that gets customers to their destinations on time–and we're looking to hire talented folks with a commitment to excellence to make it all possible.

Summary

Oversee both AWS cloud services and our on prem VMware footprint, ensuring operational stability while shaping our long-term cloud architecture and migration road map. This position will Work closely with application teams to understand workloads and prioritize migration candidates. Collaborate with transportation operations teams to ensure uptime, reliability, and safety of critical systems. Coordinate with AWS, VMware, and consulting vendors for support and solution desig n.

Roles & Responsibilities

• Cloud & Infrastructure Engineering (AWS + VMware)
• Build and maintain core AWS infrastructure: accounts, VPCs, IAM, logging, monitoring, and guardrails.
• Manage VMware on prem environments (vSphere/ESXi/NSX/vSAN), ensuring high availability and reliable day-to-day operations.
• Implement secure hybrid connectivity (VPN/Direct Connect) that supports legacy applications and gradual migration.
• Support lift and shift migrations at first, while identifying opportunities for modernization over time (containers, managed database services, serverless).
• Build initial automation and IaC foundations using Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar tools Operations & Reliability.

Improve operational maturity: create runbooks, establish change management practices, and implement monitoring/alerting.

• Lead incident response for cloud and on prem environments, reducing MTTR and building longterm reliability.
• Ensure effective capacity planning for both AWS and VMware resources.
• Introduce pragmatic SRE practices appropriate for a small team (SLOs, postmortems, metrics) Security, Compliance & Risk Management.
• Partner with security teams to implement identity controls, network segmentation, encryption, and logging.
• Put into place basic governance: account structure, role-based access control, tagging, and audit readiness.
• Help the organization adopt secure cloud use from early stages, including patching, secrets management, and configuration baselines.
• Support compliance efforts relevant to transportation operations and systems (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001) Cost Management.
• Track and manage cloud costs at an early stage—tagging, budgeting, rightsizing—ensuring predictable growth.
• Provide guidance to leadership on cost tradeoffs and migration impacts.

Education, Experience And Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related area and ten (10) years supervisory IT technical experience.
• 5+ years of cloud/virtualization engineering experience with 2+ years in a technical leadership role.
• Strong hands-on AWS experience with core services (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3, RDS, CloudWatch).
• Solid experience managing and supporting VMware environments (vSphere/ESXi, HA/DRS, storage, networking).
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred) and scripting (Python, Bash, or PowerShell).
• Experience working in environments that are early in their cloud journey or transitioning from legacy infrastructure.

Knowledge And Skills

• Experience in transportation, logistics, or other operationally critical industries.
• Exposure to modernization technologies (EKS, ECS, Lambda), even if not fully deployed yet.
• Familiarity with CI/CD tooling and DevOps practices.
• Builder mindset: capable of creating processes, standards, and automation from scratch.
• Strong communication skills with both engineers and non technical stakeholders.
• Practical and incremental approach to cloud migration and modernization.
• High accountability and willingness to roll up your sleeves in a small team environment.
• Successful rollout of foundational AWS infrastructure and governance.
• Uptime and stability of both cloud and on prem environments.
• On time completion of early migration milestones.
• Improved team operational maturity (documentation, monitoring, automation).
• Predictable monthly cloud spend and cost optimization progress.

Certificates, Licenses, Registrations

• Certification such as AWS Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional), VCP-DCV, or CKA.

At NJ Transit you will enjoy a competitive salary and excellent benefit package:

• Comprehensive Family Health Insurance – Medical, Prescription, Dental, Vision
• Flexible Spending Account
• Life Insurance
• Paid Leave
• Tuition Assistance
• Pre-Tax Commuter Benefits Plan
• Retirement Plans
• 401(a) - Retirement plan with a 6% employer contribution
• 401(k) - Retirement saving plan with up to an 3% company match
• 457(b) - Deferred Savings Plan

NJ TRANSIT is an Equal Opportunity Employer.