R&D Cloud Engineering Scientist

The University of Texas at Austin; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 104,000 - 174,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Retirement contributions

Paid vacation and sick time

Paid holidays

Job summary

The University of Texas at Austin is hiring an R&D Cloud Engineering Scientist to design, deploy, and maintain scalable cloud infrastructure for science and engineering applications. The role emphasizes IaC, multi-region deployments, and cost optimization while ensuring high security and availability.

You will collaborate with developers, build CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure, and contribute to disaster recovery planning.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer or information science or related field.
• 3+ years of cloud engineering experience.
• Experience with major cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code methodologies.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration.
• Knowledge of networking concepts.
• Familiarity with CI/CD practices.
• Understanding distributed systems principles.
• Experience designing for scalability, high availability, security, and fault tolerance.
• Strong problem-solving and communication skills.
• Ability to obtain and maintain DoD 8140 compliant security certification within six months.

Responsibilities

• Design scalable, highly available, secure, fault-tolerant distributed systems.
• Implement infrastructure as code and deploy cloud resources across regions.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure changes.
• Monitor health, performance, and cost; implement logging and alerting.
• Contribute to security, compliance, and disaster recovery planning.
• Collaborate with development teams and maintain runbooks and docs.
• Provide guidance on cloud best practices.

Skills

Cloud engineering

Distributed systems

Networking concepts

Monitoring & observability

Security practices

CI/CD practices

Documentation & runbooks

Time management

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer or information science

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Kubernetes / EKS / ECS

GitLab CI / Jenkins

AWS, Azure, or GCP

CI/CD tooling

Cloud monitoring (CloudWatch / Datadog / Prometheus)

RDS / Aurora / DynamoDB

Job description

R&D Cloud Engineering Scientist

Purpose

The position will design, implement, deploy, and maintain distributed systems and cloud infrastructure which includes contributing to cloud architecture definition and performing design and implementation within established architecture patterns. This position leverages cloud-native services and best practices to build scalable, highly available, secure, and fault‑tolerant infrastructure that supports science, research, and engineering applications.

Responsibilities

• Infrastructure Design & Architecture: Contribute to cloud architecture solutions for applications across multiple environments. Design scalable, highly available, secure, and fault‑tolerant distributed systems. Define networking, compute, storage, and security requirements and patterns. Make architectural trade‑offs to manage cloud costs. Evaluate and recommend cloud services. Create and maintain architecture diagrams and design documentation.
• Implementation & Deployment: Implement infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code. Deploy and configure cloud resources including compute, storage, networking, and databases. Set up multi‑region and multi‑availability zone deployments. Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure changes.
• Operations & Reliability: Monitor infrastructure health, performance, and cost. Implement robust monitoring, alerting, and logging solutions. Contribute to disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Support management of lifecycle of cloud costs. Optimize resource utilization and cloud costs.
• Security & Compliance: Support efforts to implement identity and access management best practices, define network security configuration, ensure data encryption at rest and in transit, compliance audits, and conduct periodic security reviews.
• Collaboration & Documentation: Partner with development teams to support application requirements. Create and maintain runbooks, documentation, and operational procedures. Provide guidance and mentorship on cloud best practices.
• Other related functions as assigned.

Applicant must be highly organized, have excellent attention to detail, and possess sound scientific judgment. The position will require effective management of their own time with the ability to plan, coordinate, and execute multiple tasks simultaneously. Regular and punctual attendance in the workplace is required.

US Citizen. Applicant selected will be subject to a government security investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information at the level appropriate to the project requirements of the position.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer or information science, or other applied sciences.
• Three years of experience in cloud engineering.
• Experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code methodologies.
• Experience with containerization and container orchestration.
• Knowledge of networking concepts.
• Familiarity with CI/CD tools and practices.
• Understanding of distributed systems principles.
• Experience designing for scalability, high availability, security, and fault tolerance.
• Strong problem‑solving and troubleshooting abilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to obtain and maintain a DoD 8140 compliant security certification within six months of employment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in designing, building, deploying, and maintaining applications in AWS.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation.
• Experience with container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes, EKS, or ECS.
• Experience with CI/CD tools such as GitLab CI, or Jenkins.
• AWS certifications such as Solutions Architect, SysOps Administrator, or Developer.
• Knowledge of monitoring solutions such as CloudWatch, Datadog, or Prometheus.
• Experience with database services such as RDS, Aurora, or DynamoDB.
• Familiarity with serverless architectures.
• DoD 8140 compliant security certification (e.g., Security+).

Benefits

• 100% employer‑paid basic medical coverage
• Retirement contributions
• Paid vacation and sick time
• Paid holidays

Salary Range

$104,000-$174,000+ / negotiable depending on qualifications.

Working Conditions

• Standard office conditions
• Repetitive use of a keyboard at a workstation
• Use of manual dexterity
• Some weekend, evening and holiday work
• Possible interstate/intrastate travel

Equal Opportunity Employer

The University of Texas at Austin, as an equal‑opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions.