Staff Cloud Engineer

WGU; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 161,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonuses

Medical, dental, vision

Tuition discount

Flexible PTO

Wellbeing program

Job summary

WGU in Salt Lake City is seeking a Staff Cloud Engineer to lead architecture, design, and implementation of enterprise-scale AWS cloud platforms that support university systems.

The role emphasizes long-term cloud roadmaps, Terraform IaC, multi-account AWS environments, CI/CD, observability, security-by-design, and mentoring senior engineers. This is an in-office position with a comprehensive benefits package.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/IT/Engineering or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years designing, building, and supporting enterprise infrastructure, cloud platforms, DevOps, or SRE environments.
• 5+ years hands-on AWS engineering experience for large-scale production.
• Deep expertise in highly available cloud infrastructure.
• Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
• Strong Linux administration experience.
• Experience building enterprise CI/CD platforms.
• Programming or scripting in Python, Go, Bash, or similar.
• Experience with mission-critical production systems with high availability.
• Mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership across teams.
• Excellent communication and architectural decision-making skills.
• Equivalent experience may substitute for education.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture, design, and implementation of enterprise-scale AWS cloud platforms supporting university systems.
• Define long-term cloud infrastructure roadmaps that improve scalability, reliability, security, operational excellence, and cost optimization.
• Architect Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using Terraform and modern cloud automation practices.
• Design highly available, fault-tolerant, multi-account AWS environments following AWS Well-Architected Framework principles.
• Build and maintain enterprise CI/CD platforms that enable secure, repeatable, and automated software delivery.
• Develop automation that eliminates manual operational work and improves platform reliability.
• Design and implement observability strategies including centralized logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting.
• Partner with application engineering teams to build cloud-native architectures and accelerate DevOps adoption.
• Architect container and serverless platforms using Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) and AWS serverless technologies.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity teams to implement secure-by-design cloud architectures, identity management, governance, and compliance controls.
• Lead performance optimization, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and resiliency initiatives.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues across distributed systems and cloud services.
• Establish cloud engineering standards, best practices, and architectural patterns across the organization.
• Mentor Senior and Cloud Engineers through technical leadership, architecture reviews, and coaching.
• Serve as a technical advisor for cloud modernization and digital transformation initiatives.
• Evaluate emerging cloud technologies and recommend adoption where appropriate.

Skills

Cloud architecture

DevOps practices

Mentoring engineers

Python scripting

Leadership

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/IT/Engineering

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

AWS

CI/CD platforms

Linux

Job description

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

Pay Range: $161,000.00 - $249,500.00

What You’ll Do

• Lead the architecture, design, and implementation of enterprise-scale AWS cloud platforms supporting mission-critical university systems.

• Define long-term cloud infrastructure roadmaps that improve scalability, reliability, security, operational excellence, and cost optimization.

• Architect Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using Terraform and modern cloud automation practices.

• Design highly available, fault-tolerant, multi-account AWS environments following AWS Well-Architected Framework principles.

• Build and maintain enterprise CI/CD platforms that enable secure, repeatable, and automated software delivery.

• Develop automation that eliminates manual operational work and improves platform reliability.

• Design and implement observability strategies including centralized logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting.

• Partner with application engineering teams to build cloud-native architectures and accelerate DevOps adoption.

• Architect container and serverless platforms using Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) and AWS serverless technologies.

• Collaborate with cybersecurity teams to implement secure-by-design cloud architectures, identity management, governance, and compliance controls.

• Lead performance optimization, capacity planning, disaster recovery, and resiliency initiatives.

• Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues across distributed systems and cloud services.

• Establish cloud engineering standards, best practices, and architectural patterns across the organization.

• Mentor Senior and Cloud Engineers through technical leadership, architecture reviews, and coaching.

• Serve as a technical advisor for cloud modernization and digital transformation initiatives.

• Evaluate emerging cloud technologies and recommend adoption where appropriate.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent professional experience.

• 10+ years of progressive experience designing, building, and supporting enterprise infrastructure, cloud platforms, DevOps, or Site Reliability Engineering environments.

• 5+ years of hands-on AWS engineering experience supporting large-scale production environments.

• Deep expertise designing and operating highly available cloud infrastructure.

• Extensive experience building Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.

• Strong Linux systems administration experience.

• Experience building and operating enterprise CI/CD platforms.

• Strong programming or scripting experience with Python, Go, Bash, or similar automation languages.

• Experience supporting mission-critical production systems with high availability requirements.

• Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and providing technical leadership across multiple teams.

• Excellent communication, documentation, and architectural decision-making skills.

Equivalent professional experience may substitute for educational requirements at the discretion of the hiring manager.

This is designated as an in-office position located in Salt Lake City, UT.

Why WGU?

At WGU, cloud engineering is foundational to delivering innovative educational experiences at scale. As a Staff Cloud Engineer, you'll have the opportunity to shape the future of our cloud platform, mentor exceptional engineers, and build modern infrastructure that supports millions of student interactions each year.

#LI-GB1

Additional Information

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

• Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive.
• Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.