Site Reliability Engineer

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

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance (fully paid for employees)

401(k) with 4% employer contribution

Up to 4 weeks of paid parental leave

$5,000 per year for professional development

Job summary

Skyward IT Solutions, LLC in Rockville, Maryland is hiring a Site Reliability Engineer to support CMS. The role involves operating AWS environments, building observability frameworks, and ensuring system performance and security compliance.

The ideal candidate has 3-5 years of relevant experience, a degree in computer science or related field, and skills in automation and cloud technologies. The position offers flexibility, competitive salaries from $112,000 to $150,000 annually, and extensive benefits.

Qualifications

• 3-5 years of experience in site reliability, systems, or cloud engineering.
• Solid working knowledge of core AWS services, architecture, and best practices.
• Comfort scripting and automating in Python.

Responsibilities

• Support the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in modernization.
• Operate and tune AWS environments to meet availability SLAs.
• Build monitoring frameworks using AWS CloudWatch and similar tools.

Skills

AWS environments

Infrastructure-as-code tools

CI/CD pipelines

Scripting in Python

Monitoring tools

Problem-solving

Clear communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science or engineering

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

AWS CloudWatch

New Relic

Splunk

Docker

Job description

What you’ll do:

• Join the team supporting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as it merges and modernizes its enterprise knowledge and data systems into a single, AI-driven platform, reducing manual effort, improving data accuracy, and enhancing transparency for stakeholders.
• Keep the systems up and the users happy. Operate and tune AWS environments to meet infrastructure and application availability SLAs, even during transition and change.
• Build observability that actually informs. Implement continuous monitoring, alerting, and dashboards using tools like AWS CloudWatch, New Relic, and Splunk, and establish performance baselines so you can spot degradation before users do.
• Automate the toil. Write infrastructure‑as‑code (Terraform, Ansible) and support CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins) and containerized workloads (Docker) for repeatable, reliable deployments.
• Define and track the numbers that matter. Set and monitor SLIs and SLOs, and produce performance, load/stress, and bottleneck reports that drive smarter decisions.
• Optimize for performance, security, and cost. Use tools like AWS Trusted Advisor to find and act on improvement opportunities.
• Support security and compliance modernization. Partner with the Security & Compliance SME to review vulnerability and security scans, feed continuous monitoring, and help advance the move toward a Continuous ATO (cATO) within a FISMA Moderate boundary (RMF, ARS, IS2P2).
• Strengthen resilience. Help design and maintain disaster recovery and COOP continuity so the systems hold up against outages, incidents, and the unexpected.
• Own incidents end to end. Drive response, run blameless post‑mortems, and implement the preventative fixes that keep the same thing from happening twice.

What we’d like you to have:

• A bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field (or equivalent hands‑on experience).
• 3–5 years of experience in site reliability, systems, or cloud engineering, with meaningful time spent in AWS environments.
• Solid working knowledge of core AWS services, architecture, and best practices.
• Hands‑on experience with infrastructure‑as‑code tools (Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation).
• A good understanding of CI/CD pipelines and automation tools (Jenkins, GitLab CI, or similar).
• Comfort scripting and automating in Python.
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability tooling (CloudWatch, New Relic, Splunk, or comparable).
• Strong problem‑solving instincts and the composure to work calmly under pressure.
• Clear communication skills, with the ability to make complex technical concepts understandable.

What would blow us away:

• You’ve previously worked with CMS.
• You have experience working in AI, NLP, or LLM‑driven environments.
• You have all the AWS certifications and the real‑world scars that come 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 (and 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 and innovative solutions. The work is exciting.

$112,000 - $150,000 a year

We believe great work deserves great pay. That’s why we ensure our compensation is not only competitive but also fair and transparent, as required by Maryland law. Expect a salary that matches your skills, experience, and the value you bring to the table — because you’re worth it!

At Skyward, we support flexible working hours and remote opportunities to help maintain a healthy work‑life balance for all employees.

Offers of employment with Skyward are contingent upon acceptable results of a background investigation.

Applicants must have the ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust security clearance due to the nature of our work as a government contractor.