Sr. DevOps Engineer

Certara USA, Inc.; Upton (PA); Remote; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Certara is hiring a remote DevOps Engineer to accelerate biosimulation software infrastructure. You will own AWS-based infrastructure, build CI/CD pipelines, and implement robust monitoring with Grafana/InfluxDB and CloudWatch across multiple environments.

The role demands hands-on experience with Terraform, Linux, and scripting, plus the ability to collaborate effectively with remote teams and stakeholders worldwide.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of hands-on AWS experience and cloud infra management.
• Strong grounding in networking, security and monitoring.
• Ability to work autonomously in a remote, multi-project environment.
• Experience with Terraform and CI/CD tooling in production.
• Proficiency with Linux-based systems and scripting.

Responsibilities

• Write Terraform code to build, deploy and manage AWS infrastructure.
• Build and manage CI/CD pipelines (CircleCI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
• Plan, build and deploy server monitoring and dashboards (InfluxDB/Grafana/CloudWatch).
• Investigate and remediate production issues as they arise.
• Respond to alerts via Slack and monitoring systems.
• Analyze logs, troubleshoot and remediate issues across environments.
• Migrate databases and servers as needed.
• Mentor junior engineers and manage development infrastruture.
• Scope large projects into epics and tasks; write runbooks and change requests.
• Investigate infra issues across dev, staging and production.
• Communicate with internal customers via email, tickets, wiki and presentations.
• Execute change requests against production.
• Collaborate with remote colleagues across multiple projects.

Skills

AWS expertise

Networking fundamentals

Autonomous working

Remote collaboration

SRE/DevOps mindset

Tools

Terraform

CircleCI

Jenkins

GitHub Actions

Docker

Kubernetes

Grafana

InfluxDB

CloudWatch

PostgreSQL

SQL Server

AWS Lambda

Job description

Overview

About Certara

Certara accelerates medicines using proprietary biosimulation software, technology and services to transform traditional drug discovery and development. Its clients include more than 2,000 biopharmaceutical companies, academic institutions and regulatory agencies across 62 countries.

Certara Software is a leader in clinical trial data software and services. Our vision is a clean data pipeline that ends in a successful regulatory submission. Certara is a certified Great Place to Work, and we're looking for motivated talent. Come help us revolutionize clinical trials and streamline the drug approval process.

Work that matters: When good drugs get delayed to the market, it's not just money that's wasted. Every day we save gives that many more patients longer, healthier lives. Work autonomously: Enjoy the freedom to develop your talents without being micromanaged. We'll support you as you add to your skillset and grow to own multiple projects. Global footprint: We serve a diverse community of users from around the world. Our software is the industry standard for preparing clinical trial data for regulatory submission

Responsibilities

Our DevOps Engineers are positioned to work across a wide range of responsibilities spanning infrastructure automation, building deployment pipelines, API development, log analysis, and more. We are looking for experienced systems engineers to help maintain, automate, and innovate within our AWS infrastructure and to help lighten the increasing amount of work that comes from being a fast growing software company!

• Writing Terraform code to build, deploy and manage AWS infrastructure.
• Building and Managing CI/CD pipelines using CircleCI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, etc.
• Planning, building and deploying server monitoring, alarming and dashboards in InfluxDB/Grafana/CloudWatch.
• Address, investigate and remediate production issues as needed (e.g. when alarms fire)
• Responding to alerts and service notifications sent via Slack and monitoring systems.
• Log file analysis, troubleshooting and remediation.
• Performing database and server migrations.
• Assisting Engineering by managing development infrastructure, keeping testing environments up and running smoothly
• Scoping large scale projects and breaking down into well-organized epics, subtasks and stories.
• Writing documentation, runbooks, Change Requests, and other similar operational documentation.
• Investigating, troubleshooting, and resolving infrastructure related issues across all environments (development, staging, production). Stellar troubleshooting skills with the ability to spot issues before they become problems.
• Communicating with internal customers, stakeholders, project management and other Certara employees and customers via written communication: email, tickets, wiki and presentations.
• Demonstrating good judgement and a keen sense of responsibility. Ability to resolve technical ops problems as they arise.
• Execution of Change Requests against production infrastructure.
• Performing all the above fully remote; engineer must be able to manage their time across multiple projects and priorities while collaborating with remote colleagues via chat, email and video calls.

Qualifications

• At least 4 years prior experience with Amazon Web services (AWS)
• Deep Knowledge of HTTP stacks (Apache/nginx/HAproxy, FastCGI, Java web applications)
• Solid understanding of networking concepts including UDP, TCP, network routing, CIDR / subnet notation, packet captures, firewall and overall network troubleshooting. Ability to design and troubleshoot global scale networks.
• 4+ year's experience with DevOps automation tools (Terraform strongly preferred)
• 2+ year's experience developing using scripting languages such as Ruby, JavaScript, Python, Bash, Java, Groovy, PHP, Perl. (Ruby/Javascript preferred)
• Experience with project management and workflow tools such as Agile, Jira, Scrum/Kanban, etc
• Time and project management skills, with the capability to prioritize and multitask as needed. Must have a proven track record of working autonomously in a self-managed/remote environment.
• 5+ year's experience with Linux-based infrastructures, Linux/Unix administration, and Linux Systems
  (Alternatively, Windows based experience would be suitable)
• Ability to mentor more junior engineers. Must work well as a team member, be able to document work and train others so they can operate on projects after they are completed.
• Analytical thinking, data driven decision making.
• Must be able to remain calm and rational under pressure, I.E. in an outage situation.
• Excellent written communication skills.
• Past experience triaging outages, handling alerts of participating in an on-call rotation.
• Prior experience working with Continuous Delivery/Continuous Integration (CI/CD) tooling
• Experience with databases (PostgreSQL/SQL Server, Oracle/DynamoDB), a plus
• Knowledge of AWS Serverless applications (AWS Lambda), a plus
• Experience building web applications in HTML/CSS/JavaScript, a plus
• Prior experience with Grafana / InfluxDB, a plus

Certara bases all employment-related decision on merit, taking into consideration qualifications, skills, achievement, and performance. We treat all applicants and employees without regard to personal characteristics such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, nationality, marital status, pregnancy, physical or mental condition, genetic information, military service, or other characteristic protected by law.