{"id":558262,"url":"https://alion.io/job/sphera-lead-devops-engineer","title":"Lead DevOps Engineer","company":{"id":8889,"name":"Sphera","domain":"sphera-ti.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/sphera","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":90,"open_postings":5,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.4,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":28,"computed_at":"2026-11-09T06:03:00Z"}},"role":"DevOps","role_family":"DevOps","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"remote","remote_scope":"stated_countries","remote_scope_basis":"posting_text","remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Canada"],"countries":["CA"],"hiring_countries":["CA"],"hiring_countries_total":1,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":97000,"max_usd":253000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_cell","sample_n":29},"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"Azure DevOps","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Configuration Management","optional":false},{"name":"Databricks","optional":false},{"name":"DNS","optional":false},{"name":"FinOps","optional":false},{"name":"Git","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"Least Privilege","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Microsoft Entra ID","optional":false},{"name":"Platform Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"PowerShell","optional":false},{"name":"Redis","optional":false},{"name":"SLI/SLO/SLA","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"Terraform","optional":false},{"name":"C#","optional":true},{"name":"Docker","optional":true},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true},{"name":"New Relic","optional":true},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"React.js","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-08T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-09","last_verified_at":"2026-11-09T23:27:44Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":63,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":[],"days_open":63},"description":"Sphera is a leading global provider of enterprise software and services that enables companies to manage and optimize their environmental, health, safety and sustainability. Our mission is to create a safer, more sustainable and productive world.\nSphera is a portfolio company of Blackstone, a U.S.-based alternative asset investment company that focuses on private equity, technology and innovation, and more. Blackstone businesses succeed through strong partnerships, a personalized approach and a commitment to exceptional performance with uncompromising integrity. Sphera and Blackstone are leaders in the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) space.\nWe are guided by our core values of Customer Centricity, Accountability, Bias to Action, Innovation, and Collaboration. These values help us recruit the right talent to join our rapidly expanding team of around the globe. It is important to us that each and every Spherion is not only eager to challenge themselves and knows how to get work done but is an awesome addition to our company culture.\nABOUT THE ROLE\nYou'll be part of a global team supporting multiple SaaS environments that help make the world a safer place.\nThis is a senior technical leadership role on the DevOps team, working closely with the Director of DevOps. Your home base is Platform Engineering, but your remit covers every product family that consumes platform services.\nYour influence here comes primarily from technical credibility, so the bar is high on both the technical and interpersonal side. You enforce the DevOps architecture and standards other teams build against, provide guidance to other leads and senior engineers on the DevOps team, and are the person engineering and product leaders come to when a design decision has real consequences.\nWe are Azure-first and PaaS-first, with everything defined in Terraform. We do not run Kubernetes. Our compute is Azure App Service, Function Apps, and Container Apps. This is a hands-on role. You will still be in the code, in the pipelines, and in incidents, and we expect you to stay there.\nLEADERSHIP AND TECHNICAL DIRECTION\nRepresent DevOps in architecture and planning forums, and surface risks and tradeoffs early rather than late.\n\nDefine and enforce DevOps architecture and standards across the organization: reference architectures, Terraform module standards, tagging conventions, environment topology, and the review path for significant infrastructure designs.\n\nProvide technical guidance and mentorship to other leads and senior engineers on the DevOps team. Raise the ceiling of the team rather than absorbing the hardest work yourself.\n\nPartner with engineering and product leadership as a trusted advisor. Review their designs, challenge assumptions constructively, and translate infrastructure constraints into language product stakeholders can act on.\n\nDrive consensus across teams with competing priorities. Make the call when consensus is not reachable, document the reasoning, and own the outcome.\n\nIdentify capability gaps on the team and in the platform, then build the case and the plan to close them.\n\nSupport hiring through technical interviews and help define what good looks like at each level on the team.\n\nRELIABILITY AND OPERATIONS OWNERSHIP\nOwn reliability outcomes for platform services. Define and maintain SLOs, error budgets, and business-focused KPIs, and use them to drive investment decisions rather than as reporting theater.\n\nOwn the health of the DevOps on-call rotation. Balance load, tune alerting with the NOC team to reduce noise, and keep on-call sustainable rather than concentrated on a few people.\n\nPartner with the NOC team as the senior technical escalation point for major platform incidents. Drive resolution across DevOps, engineering, and product, manage stakeholder communication, and keep the response organized under pressure.\n\nOwn postmortem discipline: blameless reviews, real root-cause analysis, and follow-through so action items actually close.\n\nImprove mean time to detection and recovery through better observability, runbooks, and automated remediation.\n\nCOST AND CAPACITY PARTNERSHIP\nWork with our FinOps team and engineering to set cost optimization targets, and own the technical execution against them.\n\nDrive the engineering side of optimization: right-sizing, reservation and savings plan input, tagging discipline, and eliminating idle and orphaned resources.\n\nLead capacity planning across environments and regions, and make sure growth and acquisition plans are reflected in infrastructure planning ahead of time.\n\nGive FinOps and engineering the cost visibility they need by keeping tagging, environment topology, and resource ownership clean and reportable.\n\nPLATFORM ENGINEERING AND HANDS-ON DELIVERY\nDesign, build, and maintain the shared Azure platform services used across all product families, covering new projects and features as well as enhancements to existing services.\n\nOwn platform infrastructure as code in Terraform: author reusable modules, manage state, review plans, and drive changes safely through environments.\n\nOnboard teams onto platform services and document self-service patterns so they can move without waiting on DevOps.\n\nBuild and maintain CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps for infrastructure, application deployments, and Databricks assets.\n\nManage the edge: Application Gateway and WAF configuration, including rewrite rules, path-based routing, listeners, backend pools, custom rules, and TLS, as well as Traffic Manager profiles for multi-region routing and failover.\n\nManage identity and access for the platform, including Entra ID app registrations, OAuth 2.0 and OIDC flows, service principals and managed identities, and RBAC role design and assignment.\n\nConfigure and maintain Azure AD B2C, including custom SSO XML policies (Identity Experience Framework), and support product teams integrating with them.\n\nOperate API Management, covering API and product configuration, policy authoring, versioning, and deployment of APIM changes through Terraform and pipelines.\n\nOperate Azure Service Bus, including namespaces, queues, topics, subscriptions, filters, and shared access policies and permissions, all deployed and updated as code.\n\nAutomate security, compliance, and resource-usage controls across every deployment path.\n\nMLOPS AND AI PLATFORM SUPPORT\nA distinct part of this role is enabling our MLOps team. You will be their platform-side partner and architectural advisor for:\nDeploying and configuring Azure AI Foundry projects, model deployments, and endpoints via Terraform and pipelines.\n\nDatabricks workspace deployment and configuration, including Unity Catalog, clusters, access control, and secret scopes.\n\nDatabricks job and workflow deployment pipelines, and promotion of notebooks, jobs, and DLT pipelines across environments.\n\nImplementing and enforcing AI guardrails and content-safety controls, plus the networking, private endpoints, and identity plumbing that keep model traffic and data private.\n\nBuilding repeatable, auditable deployment pipelines for models and AI services so the MLOps team can ship without manual steps.\n\nSetting the reference architecture and cost model for AI and data workloads before they scale.\n\nREQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE\nExperience and Education\n8+ years in DevOps, cloud infrastructure, or platform engineering, including 3+ years as a technical lead, staff engineer, or mentor to senior engineers.\n\nDemonstrated ownership of cloud architecture decisions at organization scale, not just at project scale.\n\nTrack record of influencing teams you do not manage, and of raising the technical level of the engineers around you.\n\nBachelor's degree in Computer Science or a similar field, or equivalent practical experience.\n\nLeadership and Communication\nExcellent communication skills, with the ability to move between a deep technical review with an engineer and a clear risk summary for an executive.\n\nStrong mentoring and coaching instincts. You give direct, useful feedback and you develop people rather than gatekeeping knowledge.\n\nSound judgment under pressure and calm ownership during incidents and escalations.\n\nAbility to build trust across DevOps, engineering, product, and security, and to hold a standard without becoming a bottleneck.\n\nStrong planning skills, and the discipline to sequence work so business expectations are met and projects land on time.\n\nAzure Platform\nCompute (PaaS and serverless): Deep hands-on experience with Azure Web Apps and App Service, Azure Function Apps, and Azure Container Apps, including deployment slots, scaling rules, VNet integration, and configuration management.\n\nNetworking and edge: Application Gateway and WAF, including rewrite rules, path-based routing, listeners, backend pools, health probes, custom WAF rules and exclusions, and TLS and certificate management.\n\nTraffic Manager profiles and routing methods.\n\nCloud networking: VNets, subnets, NSGs, route tables, hub-and-spoke architecture, Private Endpoints, and Private DNS.\n\nMessaging and integration: Azure Service Bus, including namespaces, queues, topics, subscriptions, subscription filters and rules, and shared access policies and permissions.\n\nAPI Management: APIM configuration and policy authoring (inbound, outbound, backend, and on-error), products and subscriptions, named values, versioning and revisions, and managing APIM changes through code and pipelines rather than the portal.\n\nIdentity and access: Entra ID app registrations, API permissions and consent, service principals and managed identities, OAuth 2.0 and OIDC flows, token and claims configuration, and Azure RBAC design and assignment.\n\nB2C and SSO: Azure AD B2C user flows and custom policies, including hands-on work with SSO XML policy files (Identity Experience Framework), and SAML and OIDC federation with external identity providers.\n\nSupporting services: Storage Accounts, Key Vault, Azure Cache for Redis, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Application Insights.\n\nInfrastructure and Code Automation\nTerraform (full working command, not just familiarity): authoring reusable modules, managing remote state and workspaces, provider and version pinning, plan and apply review discipline, import and drift remediation, and using Terraform as the single path for all resource changes, including APIM configuration and policy as well as Service Bus topology and access policies. You will own the standards other engineers write modules against.\n\nStrong CI/CD experience with Azure DevOps, covering YAML pipelines (and comfort with classic pipelines), multi-stage deployments, environments, approvals, service connections, and variable and secret management.\n\nStrong scripting skills in PowerShell and/or Bash, and fluency with Azure CLI.\n\nSolid Git and source-control practice, including branching strategy, pull requests, and code review at scale.\n\nStrong understanding of security principles, including least privilege, secrets management, network isolation, certificate lifecycle, and compliance-driven controls.\n\nWorking knowledge of databases, both SQL and NoSQL.\n\nPREFERRED EXPERIENCE\nExperience setting technical direction across multiple teams or product lines in a multi-tenant SaaS environment.\n\nHands-on Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, or comparable managed AI platform deployment experience.\n\nDatabricks administration and deployment automation using Unity Catalog, Databricks Asset Bundles, or the Databricks Terraform provider.\n\nExperience supporting MLOps or data engineering teams, including model deployment, guardrails, and content safety.\n\nExperience integrating infrastructure from acquisitions into an existing platform.\n\nFinOps practice or formal cloud cost management experience.\n\nAuthoring or heavily customizing B2C custom policy XML from scratch.\n\nContainers and Docker for microservice or service-oriented architectures. Note: we do not use Kubernetes, and Kubernetes experience is not required for this role.\n\nMonitoring an...","description_format":"text","description_chars":12836,"description_truncated":true,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":true},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Canada","iso":"CA","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["ESG & Carbon Accounting Software"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-09T00:45:19Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-09-16T23:42:21Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-11-09T23:27:44Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":22,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.787,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":63,"expected_fill_days":28,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-11-10T01:20:08Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/sphera-lead-devops-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/sphera-lead-devops-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-10T01:20:08Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":2990,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-11T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":8889},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=8889"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsphera-lead-devops-engineer"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fsphera-lead-devops-engineer"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fsphera-lead-devops-engineer"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/sphera-lead-devops-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsphera-lead-devops-engineer"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":558262}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"sphera-ti.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":558262},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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