Software Engineer II

Software Engineer IIEnglewood, COHybrid Role (4 days remote, 1 onsite)$60 per hourABOUT THE ROLEOur client is seeking a highly skilled Software Engineer II to join the Service Activation Integration Engineering (SAIE) Environment team. In this hands-on technical role, you will be responsible for the operational health and deployment lifecycle of over 200 microservices deployed across 14 AWS EKS clusters. The position is a blend of environment operations (40%), automation and tooling development (40%), and infrastructure/platform work (20%). You will drive both day-to-day environment operations and longer-term automation initiatives, leveraging your deep expertise in AWS, Linux, Kubernetes, and Python automation. The ideal candidate is a proactive problem solver who can independently diagnose and resolve issues in large-scale distributed microservice architectures, and who thrives in a collaborative, cross-functional environment.WHAT YOU'LL DOOwn the full deployment lifecycle for containerized applications across 14 AWS EKS clusters, executing, verifying, and documenting deployments end-to-end from pipeline through ArgoCD to pod validation and JIRA.Monitor environment health for 200+ microservices, including pod crashes, memory leaks, connection failures, and configuration drift; respond to alerts within SLA, performing root cause diagnosis and resolution.Develop and maintain Python-based automation for deployments, monitoring, and self-healing tooling, including building deployment orchestration, monitoring scripts, and automated fix creation from scratch.Design, implement, and troubleshoot GitLab CI/CD pipelines and ArgoCD (or equivalent GitOps tools such as Flux or Spinnaker) workflows, including pipeline design, rollback procedures, and sync troubleshooting.Automate configuration validation, version drift detection, and environment parity checks to reduce manual overhead and proactively catch issues before they impact QA cycles.Build and maintain real-time operational dashboards and monitoring integrations with tools such as Splunk, Datadog, CloudWatch, Prometheus/Grafana, and Webex.Manage AWS services including EKS, IAM, Secrets Manager, CloudWatch, RDS PostgreSQL, DocumentDB, ElastiCache, RabbitMQ, S3, SSM, SES, and VPC networking; maintain kubectl configurations across all clusters.Support legacy VM-based applications via GitLab CI pipelines as needed, ensuring environment parity and operational readiness.Coordinate with development, QA, and infrastructure teams across time zones for defect triage, hotfix deployments, and environment readiness, documenting all activities clearly in JIRA and Confluence.Implement self-healing patterns and operational best practices to ensure high availability and reliability of the environment.WHAT YOU BRING5-10 years of experience in DevOps, SRE, Platform Engineering, or Environment Management roles.3+ years of hands-on Kubernetes experience, including kubectl mastery, pod lifecycle management, ConfigMaps, Secrets, Ingress, HPA, and troubleshooting production issues such as CrashLoopBackOff, OOM, and ImagePull failures.Expertise in AWS services, including EKS, IAM, Secrets Manager, CloudWatch, RDS, DocumentDB, ElastiCache, S3, SSM, SES, RabbitMQ, and VPC networking.Intermediate or above Python automation skills, with real-world experience building deployment orchestration, monitoring scripts, and self-healing tooling from scratch.Experience with GitLab CI/CD and ArgoCD (or equivalent GitOps tools such as Flux or Spinnaker), including pipeline design, troubleshooting, and rollback procedures.Monitoring and observability experience with at least two tools such as Splunk, Datadog, CloudWatch, Prometheus/Grafana, and experience integrating with operational dashboards and alerting systems.Ability to independently diagnose and resolve issues in large-scale distributed microservice architectures, ensuring environment stability and readiness.Strong documentation skills, with experience using JIRA and Confluence, and proven ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams across multiple time zones.Experience automating configuration validation, version drift detection, and environment parity checks to maintain operational consistency.Familiarity with managing both containerized and legacy VM-based applications, supporting migration and operational needs as required.