AI DevOps Engineer – 1099 Contract

AI DevOps Engineer – 1099 Contract Location: United States (Hybrid) Employment Type: 1099 Independent Contractor Experience: 5 +Years About the Opportunity Bitcot is seeking an experienced AI DevOps Engineer with strong expertise in Microsoft Azure to support a strategic AI and cloud transformation initiative for a leading, well-established healthcare enterprise in the United States. This role is ideal for professionals passionate about building scalable AI platforms, automating cloud infrastructure, implementing MLOps best practices, and enabling secure, enterprise-grade AI solutions. You will work alongside cloud architects, AI engineers, data scientists, and software engineering teams to deploy and manage modern AI applications in Azure. What You'll Do Design, build, and maintain CI/CD pipelines for AI, machine learning, and cloud-native applications. Deploy, automate, and manage AI workloads using Microsoft Azure services. Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Terraform, Bicep, or ARM Templates. Build and manage containerized applications using Docker and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Develop and maintain MLOps pipelines for model training, deployment, monitoring, and lifecycle management. Automate cloud infrastructure provisioning and application deployments. Monitor application performance, infrastructure health, and cloud resources using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Application Insights. Collaborate directly with Data Science, AI Engineering, Analytics, and Software Engineering teams to enable secure deployment and operation of AI-enabled applications and services. Implement cloud security best practices, identity management, secrets management, and governance policies. Optimize Azure infrastructure for scalability, reliability, security, and cost efficiency. Troubleshoot production issues and participate in root cause analysis. Ensure cloud environments comply with enterprise security and operational standards. Required Qualifications 5+ years of experience in DevOps, Cloud Engineering, Platform Engineering, or Site Reliability Engineering with practical experience supporting AI/ML, Data, and Generative AI platforms. Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure cloud services. Experience building CI/CD pipelines using Azure DevOps and/or GitHub Actions. Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform (preferred), Bicep, or ARM Templates. Experience with Git and modern version control practices. Proficiency in Python, PowerShell, or Bash scripting. Experience implementing cloud monitoring and observability solutions. Strong understanding of networking, cloud security, identity management, and DevOps best practices. Excellent analytical, troubleshooting, and communication skills. Preferred Qualifications Experience with Azure AI Services and Azure OpenAI. Hands-on experience implementing MLOps frameworks and AI model lifecycle management. Experience working with Generative AI, Large Language Models (LLMs), Prompt Engineering, or AI orchestration frameworks such as LangChain or Semantic Kernel. Familiarity with MLflow, model registries, and experiment tracking. Experience with Azure Data Factory, Databricks, or data engineering pipelines. Microsoft Azure certifications are highly preferred: Experience supporting enterprise healthcare or other highly regulated industries is a plus. Employment Details Employment Type: 1099 Independent Contractor Location: United States (Hybrid) Experience: 5+ years Work Authorization: Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. Pay: $60.00 - $85.00 per hour Work Location: Hybrid remote in Rochester, MN 55904