Senior Cloud Systems Administrator

Black Canyon Consulting; Bethesda (MD); On-site; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Dental & Vision

401k plan with employer contribution

Paid holidays

Vacation

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Black Canyon Consulting (BCC) is seeking a Senior Cloud Systems Administrator to support NCBI in Bethesda, MD. You will design, automate, and manage production multi-cloud environments across AWS and GCP, focusing on reliability and security in a federally regulated context.

We value deep Unix/Linux expertise, IaC with Terraform, Kubernetes proficiency, and strong scripting in Python and Bash as you collaborate with a team of senior cloud professionals.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of enterprise Unix/Linux systems administration experience.
• 3+ years of production workloads in AWS or GCP.
• Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and Git.
• Kubernetes in multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
• Puppet for configuration management.
• Experience with high-throughput web services and performance tuning.
• Strong Python and Bash scripting.
• Ability to work independently and with senior cloud admins.

Responsibilities

• Design, automate, manage, and optimize multi-cloud environments across AWS and GCP.
• Implement IaC with Terraform; maintain modular infrastructure code.
• Design and maintain VPCs, networking, security groups, and interconnects.
• Monitor and alert with CloudWatch/CloudTrail and GCP Operations.
• Provide proactive support for incidents and performance tuning.

Skills

Unix/Linux administration

Terraform

Kubernetes

Puppet

Python

Bash

AWS/GCP

Networking concepts

Security best practices

Git

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Puppet

Git

AWS

GCP

Linux tooling

Job description

Black Canyon Consulting (BCC) is searching for a Senior Cloud Systems Administratorto join an established team of cloud professionals supporting high-throughput scientific computing and enterprise applications for the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), an institute of the National Institutes of Health. This opportunity is full time at the NCBI in Bethesda, MD.

In this role, you will design, automate, manage, and optimize production multi-cloud environments across Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS). We are seeking a self-sufficient administrator with deep Unix/Linux systems administration experience who can manage production cloud infrastructure from day one.

Responsibilities

• Multi-Cloud Administration: Design, administer, and maintain world-class environments across Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Author, test, review, and maintain modular infrastructure code using Terraform.
• Cloud Networking & Security: Design and maintain VPCs, subnets, routing tables, security groups, firewall rules, and hybrid interconnects ensuring compliance with federal security standards.
• Monitoring & Observability: Implement and maintain telemetry, dashboards, and alerting across AWS CloudWatch/CloudTrail and GCP Cloud Operations.
• Operations & Troubleshooting: Provide support for multi-cloud infrastructure, including responding to security incidents, performance monitoring, and tuning.

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years of dedicated, hands‑on enterprise Unix/Linux systems administration experience, with deep technical proficiency in systems internals, networking protocols, filesystems, and troubleshooting.
• 3+ years of direct operational experience administering production workloads in Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Strong, demonstrated proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform and git.
• High proficiency with Kubernetes, including multi‑cloud and cloud/on‑prem hybrid environments.
• Practical working knowledge of configuration management using Puppet (manifests, module structure, and Hiera) for systems integration and node provisioning.
• Experience with high‑throughput web services, including HTTP/S internals, request flows, caching semantics, and performance tuning.
• Strong scripting and automation skills in Python and Bash.
• Proven ability to operate independently and collaboratively in a team of senior cloud administrators

Preferred Qualifications

• Practical operational familiarity with Alma Linux 8 or similar distributions.
• Experience managing cloud environments in federal or biomedical research contexts subject to NIST / FedRAMP security frameworks

Benefits and Salary

We attract the best people in the business with our competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental and vision coverage, 401k plan with employer contribution, paid holidays, vacation, and tuition reimbursement.

We offer a competitive salary commensurate with experience and location.