Cloud Engineer III

Cloud Engineer III

Location/Address: 100% On-site in San Diego, CA

Travel & Passport: 20%, CONUS and OCONUS

Position Description:

We are urgently seeking an experienced Cloud Engineer III to design, build, integrate, and sustain secure cloud infrastructure and application runtime environments supporting mission-critical systems. This role will work across cloud compute, storage, containerization, Kubernetes orchestration, networking, monitoring, and security to provide reliable and scalable platforms for operational applications. The candidate will collaborate with software, platform, network, cybersecurity, and systems engineering teams to integrate commercial, government, and proprietary software into cohesive cloud-based environments. The role requires strong cloud and Linux fundamentals, hands-on troubleshooting capabilities, and the ability to solve complex infrastructure challenges while contributing to the continued evolution of scalable, automated, and secure cloud architectures.

Incorporated in 2002, The Marlin Alliance is a digital transformation company dedicated to ensuring our clients compete and win in tomorrow's digital world. We specialize in creating technical solutions that allow for seamless execution of automated business processes and the generation of governed, machine-consumable data. From strategic planning to advanced analytics and cybersecurity, our team provides cutting-edge, cross-disciplinary solutions. We are seeking motivated professionals who share our agile, solution-oriented mindset and are ready to deliver the real, practical results relied upon by our clients.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, configure, and sustain production cloud infrastructure supporting compute, storage, networking, containerized applications, and mission-critical workloads.
• Manage cloud compute and storage resources, including EC2 instances and block, file, and object storage, to maintain system availability, data persistence, performance, reliability, and efficient resource utilization.
• Deploy, administer, troubleshoot, and optimize containerized applications and microservices across Kubernetes environments, including container runtime, workload scheduling, service discovery, networking, ingress, and application availability.
• Implement and optimize dynamic resource management and scaling strategies across cloud and Kubernetes environments using workload demand, performance requirements, operational needs, and infrastructure cost considerations.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to design and implement application orchestration and runtime environments that integrate decoupled services, commercial products, Government Off-the-Shelf (GOTS) software, and proprietary applications into cohesive application workflows.
• Implement and maintain monitoring, logging, metrics, alerting, and health telemetry across cloud infrastructure, compute resources, containers, applications, and storage to support proactive system management and rapid troubleshooting.
• Configure and maintain cloud networking infrastructure, including VPCs, subnets, security groups, route tables, NACLs, load balancers, and supporting network services required for secure application connectivity.
• Partner with cybersecurity and engineering teams to implement operating system hardening, least-privilege access, IAM controls, secure network configurations, data protection requirements, and applicable security and compliance baselines.
• Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration, deployment, maintenance, and operational tasks using Infrastructure as Code, scripting, CI/CD, and other automation technologies where appropriate.
• Provide technical guidance and troubleshooting support across cloud, Linux, Kubernetes, application, network, storage, and security environments while documenting architectures, configurations, procedures, and recommended solutions.

Required knowledge, skills, abilities, education and experience:

• Strong experience in cloud engineering, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, systems administration, DevOps, or related technical disciplines.
• Hands-on experience deploying, configuring, administering, troubleshooting, and sustaining cloud-based compute, storage, networking, and application infrastructure.
• Experience administering Linux-based systems and troubleshooting operating system, application, resource utilization, connectivity, and infrastructure performance issues.
• Experience deploying and supporting containerized applications using Docker, containerd, Kubernetes, or similar container and orchestration technologies.
• Understanding of Kubernetes architecture and operations, including workloads, Pods, Services, networking, ingress, resource management, scaling, and application deployment.
• Experience with cloud networking concepts, including virtual networks, subnets, routing, security groups, access controls, load balancing, and secure connectivity.
• Experience implementing or supporting monitoring, logging, metrics, alerting, and observability capabilities for infrastructure and application environments.
• Understanding of cloud security, IAM, least-privilege access, system hardening, data protection, network security, and secure configuration practices.
• Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills with the ability to diagnose complex issues spanning cloud infrastructure, Linux systems, containers, applications, storage, networking, and security.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to collaborate with software, infrastructure, platform, networking, cybersecurity, program, and operational stakeholders.

Preferred Skills and Experience:

• Hands-on experience with AWS services including EC2, EBS, EFS, S3, VPCs, subnets, Security Groups, route tables, NACLs, IAM, Auto Scaling Groups, ALB/NLB, CloudWatch, and related infrastructure services.
• Experience administering AWS EKS or self-managed Kubernetes clusters and supporting containerized microservices in production environments.
• Experience implementing Kubernetes scaling and resource management using Horizontal Pod Autoscalers, Karpenter, Cluster Autoscaler, resource requests and limits, quotas, or similar capabilities.
• Experience with monitoring and observability technologies such as Amazon CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry, or similar platforms.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code technologies such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, OpenTofu, or similar declarative provisioning tools.
• Experience integrating cloud and container deployments with CI/CD or GitOps technologies such as GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Argo CD, Flux, or similar platforms.
• Experience using Python, Bash, Go, or similar languages to automate infrastructure provisioning, administration, maintenance, monitoring, and health checks.
• Experience integrating GOTS, Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS), third-party, legacy, or proprietary software into modern cloud and containerized environments.
• Familiarity with AMI management, CIS Benchmarks, STIGs, vulnerability remediation, encryption, secrets management, and other security practices applicable to government cloud environments.
• Experience supporting distributed, hybrid cloud, or other complex application environments.
• Experience supporting government, defense, classified, or other security- and compliance-driven cloud environments.

Education and Certification Requirements:

• Bachelor's Degree or Equivalent Experience

• Current Security+ Certificate

Citizenship and Clearance Requirements:

• U.S. Citizenship required
• No dual citizenship

• TS/SCI Eligible, security clearance required

Work Environment / Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Typical office environment with no unusual hazards.

• The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

• Constant sitting while using the computer terminal.

• Constant use of sight abilities while reviewing documents.

• Constant use of speech/hearing abilities for communication.

• Occasional reaching, stooping, kneeling, or crouching may be required.

• Occasional lifting, up to 20 pounds.

• A constant state of mental alertness.

• Frequent work under deadlines.

Job Classification

• Salary Range: $120,000$200,000

Disclaimer

This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee(s) incumbent in this position. Employees will be required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by any person authorized to give instructions or assignments. All duties and responsibilities are essential functions and requirements and are subject to possible modification to reasonably accommodate individuals with disabilities.

To perform this job successfully, the incumbents will possess the skills, aptitudes, and abilities to perform each duty proficiently. Some requirements may exclude individuals who pose a direct threat or significant risk to the health or safety of themselves or others. The requirements listed in this document are the minimum levels of knowledge, skills, or abilities.

This document does not create an employment contract, implied or otherwise, other than an "at-will" relationship.

An Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities.