Sr DevOps Engineer

Strategic Education; Minneapolis (MN); On-site; USD 119,000 - 179,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/dental/vision plans

Tuition assistance

Well-being programs

Job summary

Strategic Education Inc (SEI) seeks a Senior DevOps Engineer to advance Sophia Learning and Workforce Edge platforms. The role combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership to set standards, mentor engineers, and design scalable, reliable systems.

You will drive CI/CD strategy, manage cloud-native workloads on GCP and Kubernetes, and partner with product, security, and engineering to deliver business value quickly. Travel up to 10% may be required.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of DevOps, platform, or infrastructure engineering experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with GCP.
• 3+ years of Kubernetes experience.
• Strong experience with serverless architectures.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code.

Responsibilities

• Architect, design, and implement scalable, cloud-native solutions on GCP using serverless technologies and Kubernetes (GKE).
• Lead end-to-end delivery of infrastructure and platform solutions including design, development, testing, deployment, and continuous improvement.
• Own and evolve the organization’s CI/CD strategy, including build automation, testing gates, and production deployment workflows.
• Design and maintain containerized workloads (Docker, Kubernetes), including Helm charts, autoscaling strategies, and service mesh configurations.
• Build and optimize serverless architectures to improve scalability and reduce operational overhead and cost.
• Establish and enforce best practices for scalability, availability, security, and performance across production systems.

Skills

DevOps

GCP

Kubernetes

Serverless architectures

Infrastructure as Code

Docker

CI/CD

Git

REST APIs

GitOps

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Tools

Helm

Job description

Education Technology Services (ETS), a dynamic sub-division of Strategic Education Inc (SEI), is dedicated to revolutionizing the landscape of online education. Our flagship products, Sophia Learning and Workforce Edge, are at the forefront of providing accessible, affordable, and high-quality education solutions. Sophia Learning offers self-paced online general education courses recommended for college credit, while Workforce Edge is a cutting-edge education benefit management platform.

We're seeking a Senior DevOps Engineer supporting the Sophia Learning and Workforce Edge platforms. The ideal candidate combines deep hands-on expertise with strong technical leadership setting standards, mentoring engineers, designing scalable solutions, and supporting compliance initiatives. This is a high-impact role for someone who thrives at the intersection of engineering excellence and operational reliability.

What You’ll Do

• Architect, design, and implement scalable, cloud-native solutions on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) using serverless technologies (Cloud Run, Cloud Functions) and Kubernetes (GKE)
• Lead end-to-end delivery of infrastructure and platform solutions, including design, development, testing, deployment, and continuous improvement
• Own and evolve the organization’s CI/CD strategy, including build automation, testing gates, and production deployment workflows
• Design and maintain containerized workloads (Docker, Kubernetes), including Helm charts, autoscaling strategies, and service mesh configurations
• Build and optimize serverless architectures to improve scalability and reduce operational overhead and cost
• Establish and enforce best practices for scalability, availability, security, and performance across production systems
• Drive observability and monitoring strategies (logging, alerting, incident response)
• Lead production support and reliability efforts, including incident management, root cause analysis, and postmortems
• Mentor engineers on cloud architecture, DevOps practices, and infrastructure-as-code patterns
• Partner cross-functionally with product, security, and engineering teams to deliver business value quickly
• Manage complex initiatives in an agile environment, balancing technical debt with feature delivery
• Identify and evaluate emerging technologies, rapidly prototyping solutions to inform technical direction
• Champion automation, process improvement, and tooling modernization across engineering

Required Experience

Cloud & Platform Engineering

• 5+ years of DevOps, platform, or infrastructure engineering experience
• 3+ years of hands-on experience with GCP
• 3+ years of Kubernetes experience
• Strong experience with serverless architectures
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code
• Hands-on experience with Docker and container registries
• Familiarity with Kubernetes autoscaling and node provisioning tools

CI/CD, Automation & Development

• Expert-level experience with CI/CD tools
• Strong proficiency with Git
• Experience with scripting and automation
• Experience building and consuming REST APIs
• Familiarity with GitOps workflows

Observability, Data & Security

• Experience with monitoring and observability tools
• Experience working with databases and distributed systems
• Familiarity with security scanning and vulnerability management tools

Preferred Experience

• Familiarity with AI coding assistants and integrating them into engineering workflows
• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines that incorporate automated analysis or decision-making alongside traditional processes
• Understanding of when to apply automation vs. human judgment, with appropriate safeguards
• Interest in evolving the SDLC through AI-driven practices such as prompt engineering and tool orchestration

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field or equivalent experience

Preferred Certifications

• GCP Professional certifications

Other:

• Must be able to travel 10% of time.
• Must be able to lift 20 lbs.
• Typical office setting.
• Mobility within the office including movement from floor to floor.
• Travel via plane, car, and metro may be required to perform this job.
• Must be able to work more than 40 hours per week when business needs warrant
• Access information using a computer.
• Effectively communicate, both up and down the management chain.
• Effectively cope with stressful situations
• Strong mental acuity
• Regular, dependable attendance and punctuality are essential functions of this job.
• Other essential functions and marginal job functions are subject to modification.

The final stage of the interview process will require an in-person interview at either our Herndon, VA or Minneapolis, MN location

SEI offers a comprehensive package of benefits to employees scheduled 30 hours or more per week. In addition to medical, dental, vision, life and disability plans, SEI employees may take advantage of well-being incentives, parental leave, paid time off, certain paid holidays, tax saving accounts (FSA, HSA), 401(k) retirement benefit, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, tuition assistance as well as entertainment and retail discounts. Non-exempt employees are eligible for overtime pay, if applicable.

SEi is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive and collaborative culture where individuals can grow their careers and contribute fully. We strive to attract talent with broad experiences, skills and perspectives. We welcome applications from all. While it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top end of the pay range at SEI, we offer a competitive salary. The actual base pay offered to the successful candidate may vary depending on multiple factors including, but not limited to, job-related knowledge/skills, experience, business needs, geographical location, and internal pay equity. Our Talent Acquisition Team is ready to discuss your interest in joining SEI. The expected salary range for this position is below.

$119,300.00 - $178,900.00 - Salary

If you require reasonable accommodations to complete our application process, please contact our Human Resources Department at [e-mail]