ZipStaff Inc.
Senior Platform Engineer
Remote•United States•Contract
$45 - $48 hourly
$45 - $48 hourly
About the Job
Job Title: Senior Platform Engineer
Location: Remote (U.S.)
Employment Type: Contract (W2 through ZipStaff — No C2C or 1099)
About the Opportunity:
ZipStaff is seeking a senior Platform Engineer with deep expertise in AWS, DevOps, and DevSecOps practices to design and maintain secure, scalable, and developer-friendly platforms for a financial services organization.
This is a fully remote opportunity.
In this role, you will champion developer experience by building self-service capabilities, golden paths, and automation while ensuring platform reliability through SRE practices and compliance automation. Experience with Internal Developer Portals (Atlassian Compass preferred or Backstage) is highly valued.
What You'll Do:
- Architect and maintain AWS-based infrastructure (ECS, EKS, ECR, VPC, IAM, Lambda, API Gateway, S3, RDS).
- Implement Infrastructure as Code using AWS CDK (preferred), CloudFormation, and Terraform for modular, reusable patterns.
- Optimize cost, performance, and security across environments.
- Orchestrate containers, observability stacks, and scaling strategies to ensure reliability and high availability.
- Build and standardize CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, reusable workflows, and modern deployment strategies.
- Integrate GitHub Advanced Security (CodeQL, Secret Scanning, Dependabot) into pipelines.
- Enable OIDC-based deployments for secure, secretless AWS access.
- Drive adoption of an Internal Developer Platform (Atlassian Compass preferred or Backstage) for self-service, service cataloging, scorecards, and golden paths.
- Implement OpenTelemetry for distributed tracing and metrics; configure APM tooling (e.g., Datadog) with dashboards, alerts, and SLOs.
- Improve MTTR through automated incident response and runbooks.
- Embed security checks in CI/CD (SAST, dependency scanning, secret scanning, container image scanning) to support SOC 2 and PCI compliance.
- Apply Policy as Code (OPA / Conftest) and AWS Well-Architected Framework principles.
- Support SBOM and container image signing (Cosign) for supply chain security.
- Partner with engineering teams to define platform standards, mentor peers, and promote an automation-first culture.
Required Qualifications:
- 7–8+ years of hands-on experience in platform engineering, DevOps, or cloud infrastructure roles.
- Strong expertise in AWS (ECS, EKS, ECR, IAM, VPC, Lambda, API Gateway, S3, RDS).
- Solid experience with Infrastructure as Code (AWS CDK preferred, Terraform, CloudFormation).
- Hands-on experience building and standardizing CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions.
- Experience with containers (ECS/EKS) and observability (OpenTelemetry, Datadog, or similar).
- Strong troubleshooting, problem-solving, and solution-oriented mindset.
- Ability to operate with minimal supervision and deliver outcomes independently.
- Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with Internal Developer Portals (Atlassian Compass preferred or Backstage).
- GitHub Advanced Security (CodeQL, Secret Scanning, Dependabot).
- Policy as Code (OPA, Conftest).
- Secrets management (AWS Secrets Manager, Vault).
- Prior software development experience.
- AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, or Security Specialty).
- Experience supporting SOC 2 / PCI compliance controls.
About ZipStaff:
ZipStaff partners with leading organizations to connect skilled technology professionals with high-impact contract opportunities. We focus on quality matches and long-term success.
To apply, please submit your resume highlighting your AWS platform engineering, CI/CD, and developer experience / IDP background.