Senior DevOps Engineer (Contractor)

📋 Description

• • Hauler Hero is seeking a highly skilled and independent Senior DevOps Engineer to join our team as a contractor, focusing on the evolution and management of our cloud infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This is a hands-on, senior individual contributor role where you will be instrumental in designing, operating, troubleshooting, and migrating our infrastructure towards a robust infrastructure-as-code (IaC) paradigm. You will collaborate closely with our backend and platform engineering teams, supporting the deployment of Java, Kotlin, and Python services orchestrated by Kubernetes, specifically on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
• • This role is fundamentally outcome-driven, demanding a high degree of technical judgment, self-sufficiency, and exceptional communication skills. We are building an AI-First Engineering organization, meaning AI tools are deeply integrated into our daily workflows. This includes leveraging tools like Claude (Opus), Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot for AI-assisted generation of Terraform/OpenTofu configurations, Helm charts, Kubernetes manifests, and automation scripts. You will also utilize AI for log analysis, troubleshooting, and enhancing our observability capabilities, as well as for generating documentation, runbooks, and post-mortems. Your critical responsibility will be to meticulously review, validate, and secure all AI-generated output. While speed is valued, correctness and security are paramount. This position is not suitable for engineers who are resistant to adopting and integrating AI-assisted workflows into their daily practice.
• • **Key Responsibilities - Infrastructure & Cloud Operations:**
• • Design, implement, operate, and maintain our production infrastructure hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• • Proactively manage and optimize Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters, including workloads, networking configurations, and resource allocation.
• • Administer and ensure the performance and reliability of our Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL) instances and Redis caches.
• • Own and enforce robust Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, manage service accounts, and implement least-privilege access principles across the cloud environment.
• • Manage DNS configurations using OctoDNS, ensuring seamless integration and operation across Google DNS and Cloudflare.
• • Continuously monitor and ensure the security, scalability, reliability, and cost-efficiency of our cloud infrastructure.
• • **Key Responsibilities - Infrastructure as Code & Automation:**
• • Lead the strategic migration from legacy bash-based provisioning methods to a modern, declarative approach using Terraform or OpenTofu.
• • Introduce, develop, and maintain Helm charts to streamline and standardize Kubernetes application deployments.
• • Systematically eliminate manual operational tasks ('click-ops') by ensuring all infrastructure is defined, version-controlled, and managed declaratively.
• • Rigorously review and enhance existing Kubernetes manifests and deployment practices to improve efficiency and maintainability.
• • **Key Responsibilities - CI/CD & Deployment:**
• • Build, maintain, and continuously improve our Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, leveraging tools such as Google Cloud Build and GitHub Actions.
• • Provide robust support for automated builds, comprehensive testing suites, and seamless deployments for our Java, Kotlin, and Python services.
• • Enhance deployment safety and reliability through the implementation of advanced rollout strategies, effective health checks, and automated rollback mechanisms.
• • **Key Responsibilities - Monitoring & Incident Response:**
• • Configure and manage comprehensive monitoring and alerting systems using Google Operations (Cloud Monitoring & Logging), New Relic, and UptimeRobot.
• • Serve as a primary escalation point for critical production incidents, providing rapid and effective response.
• • Diagnose and resolve complex system issues by expertly analyzing logs, metrics, and traces.
• • Proactively improve system observability and work towards reducing Mean Time To Resolution (MTTR) for all incidents.
• • **Key Responsibilities - Security & Secrets Management:**
• • Implement and manage secure secrets handling using Google Secret Manager, GKE Secrets, and Keeper.
• • Enforce strict security configurations and implement automated credential rotation policies.
• • Partner closely with engineering teams to ensure secure runtime environments and robust deployment patterns are consistently applied.
• • **What Success Looks Like:**
• • Our infrastructure is fully reproducible, auditable, and managed exclusively through code.
• • CI/CD pipelines are consistently reliable, performant, and secure.
• • Production incidents are quickly diagnosable and resolved with minimal impact.
• • Manual operational tasks are progressively eliminated, replaced by intelligent automation.
• • Engineering teams are empowered to deploy their services independently, safely, and efficiently.
• • **Contractor & Location Notes:**
• • This is a contractor engagement, not a full-time employment position.
• • Candidates must be legally based in a Latin American (LATAM) country.
• • We expect a high level of senior-level ownership, proactivity, and clear, concise communication.
• • Consistent overlap with standard US working hours is a mandatory requirement for effective collaboration.