ZipStaff Inc.

Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer

Washington, District of Columbia•Contract
$59 - $60 hourly
About the Job
Job Title: Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer.
Location: Washington, DC (On-site).
Employment Type: Contract (W2 through ZipStaff — No C2C or 1099).

About the Opportunity:
ZipStaff is seeking a highly skilled Senior Cloud Infrastructure Engineer to serve as a key technical lead for a major transportation organization.
In this role, you will design, deploy, automate, and maintain highly scalable, secure, enterprise-grade cloud environments—primarily within AWS, with secondary support for Azure. You will drive major cloud migrations, establish cloud governance policies, and optimize multi-cloud operations while mentoring junior engineers and delivering robust business continuity solutions.

What You’ll Do:
  • Lead the end-to-end design, implementation, and operational management of scalable, resilient, and highly available AWS cloud infrastructure, with secondary support for Azure environments.
  • Drive Infrastructure as Code (IaC) adoption using tools such as Terraform or CloudFormation to automate cloud provisioning, configuration management, patching, and deployments.
  • Architect and execute enterprise cloud migration, application modernization, and continuous platform optimization strategies.
  • Design and maintain standardized, reusable cloud platform templates and enterprise landing zones to accelerate secure team onboarding.
  • Establish enterprise cloud security standards, IAM best practices, compliance controls, governance policies, and operational workflows.
  • Design and implement comprehensive backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions across cloud workloads.
  • Resolve complex cloud networking, infrastructure, and application integration issues; perform root-cause analysis with a high sense of urgency and ownership.
  • Mentor junior cloud engineers, provide technical guidance across projects, and partner closely with DevOps, Security, Networking, and Application teams.

Required Qualifications:
  • 7+ years of broad IT background spanning systems architecture, infrastructure management, operating systems, databases, enterprise applications, and hybrid networking.
  • 5+ years of dedicated, hands-on experience designing, deploying, and managing enterprise cloud infrastructure and applications.
  • Deep knowledge of core AWS services, including EC2, VPC, Route 53, ALB/NLB, S3, IAM, CloudWatch, SSM, RDS, Lambda, and container services (ECS/EKS).
  • Practical working knowledge of Azure services, including Virtual Machines, VNETs, Azure Storage, IAM, and Azure Backup.
  • Strong automation capabilities using PowerShell, Python, or Bash, along with experience managing Git-based source control and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Solid understanding of DNS, TCP/IP, VPNs, firewalls, hybrid cloud connectivity, secrets management, and cloud security compliance controls.
  • Hands-on experience with containerization technologies and platforms, including Docker and Kubernetes.
  • Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills, a self-motivated drive to work independently or in an integrated team environment, and strong problem-solving skills under tight SLAs.
  • Ability to work on-site in Washington, DC.

Preferred Qualifications:
  • Prior experience leading cloud migrations or platform modernization initiatives in a large enterprise or transportation environment.
  • Background establishing cloud governance, landing zones, and reusable platform templates.
  • Experience mentoring junior engineers and collaborating across DevOps, Security, and Application teams.
  • Additional depth with multi-cloud operations or advanced AWS/Azure services.

Benefits:
  • Health Insurance.
  • Dental Insurance.
  • Vision Insurance.
  • 401(k) + 401(k) matching.
  • Paid time off.
  • Referral Program.

About ZipStaff:
ZipStaff partners with leading organizations to connect skilled technology professionals with high-impact contract opportunities. We focus on quality matches, clear communication, and long-term success for candidates and clients.

To apply, submit your resume highlighting your 5+ years of hands-on AWS cloud infrastructure experience, IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation), Docker/Kubernetes, migrations, and any Azure exposure. Pure research or junior experience will not be considered.