Principal DevOps Engineer (PeopleFluent)

This is a senior infrastructure leadership role focused on designing, automating, and operating hybrid environments across on-premises data centers and AWS. You will set the technical direction for compute, networking, and platform services while driving scalability, security, reliability, and cost efficiency. The role combines hands-on engineering with architectural ownership and end-to-end delivery of complex infrastructure initiatives. You will work closely with engineering and product teams to define requirements and communicate technical trade-offs. As a subject matter expert, you will contribute expertise across areas such as virtualization, cloud architecture, and observability. The position also provides opportunities to mentor engineers and shape how modern hosting infrastructure is built and operated.

The role requires extensive infrastructure engineering experience, strong architectural judgment, and deep hands-on knowledge across cloud, Linux, networking, virtualization, automation, and observability. Candidates should demonstrate:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of professional industry experience.
• Strong experience with Enterprise Linux, including SELinux policies, standard configurations, enforcement, and headless server administration.
• Strong networking fundamentals, including DHCP, subnetting, VLANs, network segmentation, and related concepts.
• Hands-on experience with virtualization platforms such as Proxmox and/or VMware vSphere.
• Experience with advanced virtualization cluster configuration, virtual switches, VLANs, and network segmentation.
• Experience owning and administering observability and monitoring platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, or equivalent technologies.
• Strong Git and shell scripting skills.
• Extensive hands-on experience with AWS services including EC2, S3, RDS, and Route 53.
• Experience provisioning, orchestrating, and administering infrastructure using Terraform, Ansible, and Kubernetes.
• Experience implementing release and deployment automation with Jenkins.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure-as-code and automated infrastructure management.
• Experience managing configuration changes through structured change-control processes.
• Familiarity with Git-based development and infrastructure workflows, including branching, pull requests, and code reviews.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills with a proactive, self-starting approach.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with engineering and product teams.
• Strong communication skills, particularly when explaining complex technical decisions and trade-offs.
• Ability to operate at both strategic architectural and hands-on engineering levels.

• Data center operations, including automated network-switch configuration.
• Automation of basic firewall rules and network security controls.
• Database administration across Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and/or Microsoft SQL.
• Experience with Elasticsearch and Kafka.
• Experience working in Agile and Scrum environments.
• Background in web-based or SaaS environments.
• Experience working in startup or fast-paced technology environments.