Remote Lead SRE: Azure Cloud & Kubernetes Platform

Lumen Technologies; United States; Remote; USD 123,000 - 136,000; Full time

Job summary

Lumen Technologies is seeking a Lead Site Reliability Engineer to drive transformational change across Azure Public and Azure Government clouds, designing CI/CD and observability systems, and partnering with development teams to deliver scalable, secure, high-availability services.

This fully remote role within the United States requires 8+ years in DevOps/SRE, hands-on AKS, GitOps, Terraform, and strong automation skills, with a focus on security, compliance, and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in DevOps/Platform/SRE roles.
• 2+ years leading teams or cross-functional initiatives.
• Deep expertise in Azure (Public/Gov) cloud services and resource management.
• Hands‑on with AKS, Helm 3, Flux CD (GitOps), Docker.
• Experience with Prometheus & Grafana (metrics, alerting, dashboards).
• Proficiency in Nginx and Kong (ingress/API gateway).
• CI/CD automation using Jenkins and GitHub Actions.
• Strong development skills for automation & debugging (Python, Go, or TypeScript; Bash/PowerShell).
• Proven experience with IaC using Terraform (or similar tools like Bicep), policy-as-code, and secure SDLC integrations.
• Ability to obtain GSA Tier 2 Suitability Clearance.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate AKS clusters with enterprise guardrails (RBAC, pod security policies, node pools, autoscaling, upgrade strategies).
• Implement GitOps with Flux CD; define Helm chart standards and manage lifecycle via Helm 3.
• Own container platform best practices: Docker image standards, multi-stage builds, SBOM, vulnerability scanning, and base image governance.
• Configure Nginx (ingress controller) and Kong (API gateway) including routing, rate limiting, mutual TLS, JWT/OAuth2 auth, and WAF integration.
• Stand up Prometheus for metrics scraping, alert rules, and exporters; integrate Grafana for dashboards and SLO/SLA visualization.
• Lead Jenkins pipeline automation and GitHub Actions workflows for build/test/deploy, with reusable templates and environment promotion strategies.
• Build infrastructure-as-code and policy-as-code pipelines using Terraform (or similar tools like Bicep), with automated validations, PR gates, and compliance checks.
• Architect and enforce secure integration with Azure Key Vault for secret, key, and certificate management; automate cert-manager/issuer (ACME/PFX).
• Design and implement Azure Networking: VNets, NSGs, route tables, Private Link, Firewall rules, egress control, and traffic segregation in hub-spoke models.
• Operate and integrate Azure Blob Storage, Azure Redis Cache, PostgreSQL, Azure Cosmos DB (Mongo API), and Azure Service Bus.

Skills

Azure

AKS

Helm 3

Flux CD

Docker

Prometheus

Grafana

Nginx

Kong

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

Python

Go

TypeScript

Terraform

Bicep

Azure Key Vault

Education

Azure Certifications (AZ-104, AZ-305, AZ-400)

Terraform Associate

CKA/CKAD

Tools

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

Flux CD

Kubernetes (AKS)

Terraform

Job description

Lumen Technologies is seeking a Lead Site Reliability Engineer to drive transformational change across Azure Public and Azure Government clouds, designing CI/CD and observability systems, and partnering with development teams to deliver scalable, secure, high-availability services.

This fully remote role within the United States requires 8+ years in DevOps/SRE, hands-on AKS, GitOps, Terraform, and strong automation skills, with a focus on security, compliance, and operational excellence.