Site Reliability Engineer

Skyward; Rockville (MD); Hybrid; USD 112,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Fully paid medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with 4% employer contribution

Up to 4 weeks paid paternity and maternity leave

$5,000 per year for professional development

$600 per year for technical supplies

Job summary

Skyward, based in Rockville, Maryland, is seeking a skilled Site Reliability Engineer to enhance CMS data systems. You will support AWS environments, automate processes, and ensure availability and performance.

The ideal candidate has a Bachelor's in computer science and 3-5 years of experience in AWS. We offer comprehensive benefits, including medical insurance, generous leave, and a competitive salary ranging from $112,000 to $150,000 annually.

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of site reliability, systems, or cloud engineering experience.
• Solid knowledge of core AWS services and architecture best practices.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools.

Responsibilities

• Support CMS in merging and modernizing data systems.
• Operate AWS environments to meet availability SLAs.
• Build observability with continuous monitoring and dashboards.

Skills

AWS cloud services

Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible)

CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins)

Python scripting

Monitoring tools (CloudWatch, New Relic, Splunk)

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Terraform

AWS CloudWatch

New Relic

Docker

Job description

Skyward is a people‑centered business dedicated to improving human advancement through information technology. We serve our clients with a value‑driven, collaborative culture that emphasizes integrity, compassion, inquisitiveness, and authenticity. We are seeking an experienced Site Reliability Engineer to join our team.

What You'll Do

• Support the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as it merges and modernizes its enterprise knowledge and data systems into a single, AI‑driven platform. Reduce manual effort, improve data accuracy, and enhance transparency for stakeholders.
• Operate and tune AWS environments to meet infrastructure and application availability SLAs, even during transition and change.
• Build observability that informs; implement continuous monitoring, alerting, and dashboards using AWS CloudWatch, New Relic, and Splunk; establish performance baselines.
• Automate toil; write infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform, Ansible) and support CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins) and containerized workloads (Docker).
• Define and track SLI and SLO metrics; produce performance, load/stress, and bottleneck reports.
• Optimize for performance, security, and cost; use tools such as AWS Trusted Advisor.
• Partner with Security & Compliance SME to review vulnerability scans, feed continuous monitoring, and advance the move toward continuous ATO within a FISMA Moderate boundary.
• Design and maintain disaster recovery and COOP continuity plans.
• Own incidents end to end; drive response, run blameless post‑mortems, and implement preventative fixes.

What We’d Like You to Have

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 3–5 years of site reliability, systems, or cloud engineering experience, with significant time in AWS.
• Solid knowledge of core AWS services, architecture, and best practices.
• Hands‑on experience with infrastructure‑as‑code tools (Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI, etc.).
• Comfort scripting in Python.
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability tooling (CloudWatch, New Relic, Splunk, etc.).
• Strong problem‑solving instincts and composure under pressure.
• Clear communication skills; ability to explain complex technical concepts simply.

What Would Blow Us Away

• Experience working with CMS.
• Experience in AI, NLP, or LLM‑driven environments.
• AWS certifications and the real‑world experience that comes with them.

What We Offer You

• Medical, dental, vision insurance (fully paid for employees)
• 15 days of paid leave
• 7 days of sick leave
• 2 days bereavement leave
• 11 paid Federal holidays
• Up to 40 hours for jury duty
• 401(k) with 4% employer contribution (no vesting period)
• Up to 4 weeks of paid paternity and maternity leave
• Company‑provided laptop
• $5,000 per year for professional development
• $600 per year for technical supplies and equipment
• $2,000 referral bonus
• Life and disability insurance
• HSA and FSA
• Legal Shield and ID Shield Voluntary Benefits
• Opportunity to work in a collaborative, motivated team focused on modernizing government services with cutting‑edge technology.

$112,000 - $150,000 a year. We believe great work deserves great pay. Compensation is competitive, transparent, and fair, as required by Maryland law. We support flexible working hours and remote opportunities for a healthy work‑life balance.

Offers of employment are contingent upon acceptable background investigation results. Applicants must obtain and maintain a Public Trust security clearance due to the nature of our work as a government contractor. We may use artificial intelligence tools in the hiring process, but final hiring decisions are made by human recruiters.