Observability Response & Reliability​/SRE Consultant

About the Company:

Netspend Corporation is a global, vertically-integrated financial services and technology company dedicated to the delivery of innovative financial empowerment solutions to consumers worldwide. Netspend's financial products and services span prepaid, debit, cross-border payments, and loyalty solutions for consumers and enterprise partners.

Netspend provides prepaid and debit account solutions that connect customers with secure, convenient access to global payment networks so they can manage their money and make everyday purchases. With a nationwide U.S. retail network, customers can purchase and reload Netspend products at 130,000 reload points and over 100,000 distributing locations.

Since our founding in 1999 by industry pioneers, Netspend products have processed billions of dollars in transaction volume and served millions of customers worldwide. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with employees worldwide.

Role Overview

We are seeking a SRE Consultant with over 15 years of experience to lead the architectural evolution of our global financial infrastructure. This is a high-impact leadership role focused on decommissioning legacy technical debt, spearheading a migration from legacy to modernize  CI/CD , and maturing our  AWS Cloud  footprint. You will ensure the absolute reliability of systems handling ACH, millions of transactions, & bank-sensitive data while mentoring the broader engineering team.

Required Skills:

Bachelor's Degree and 15+ years of experience in Site Reliability, Monitoring and Infrastructure Architect.
Legacy-to-Cloud Specialist:
Experience specifically in 'strangler patterns'—moving functions off legacy systems (Xymon, Puppet, SVN) without interrupting live financial traffic.
Expert Linux Engineering:
Mastery of Linux internals, kernel tuning, and automated patching dleware & Data:
Hands-on experience with Kafka (Connectors/Schema Registry) and Cassandra in a production environment.
Fin Tech Acumen:
Prior experience with payment rails, bank-end connectivity, and high-security hardware/physical device integration.
Exceptional problem-solving skills and ability to work in high-pressure environments.
Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, for collaboration with cross-functional teams.

Key Responsibilities

Observability Strategy:
Design an integrated AIOps strategy using monitoring tools to move from reactive alerting to proactive, self-healing infrastructure.
Infrastructure Transformation:
Lead the strategic transition from Puppet to modern tools, defining the standards for configuration management and 'Infrastructure as Code.'
Dev Ops Modernization:
Replace manual workflows with robust Git Lab CI/CD pipelines for production deployments and automated patching cycles.
Cloud

Roadmap:

Architect the migration of on-premises workloads (F5, local SFTP, physical devices) to AWS-native equivalents (ALB, AWS Transfer Family, EC2).
Git Lab CI/CD:
Designing complex pipelines that integrate security scanning, automated testing, and multi-region AWS deployments.
Legacy Integration:
Maintaining and eventually decommissioning SVN-based workflows and Puppet-controlled repositories.
Hybrid Networking:
Advanced management of AWS Direct Connect and VPC peering to ensure seamless connectivity with financial partners.
Security & Identity:
Implementing AWS KMS, Secrets Manager, and IAM RBAC to replace/augment Vault and physical key management (Virtucrypt).
High Availability:
Designing redundant, multi-AZ architectures for critical file-processing hubs like Axway and Lean Adjustment Hub.
Secure File Transfer:
Deep knowledge of SFTP, AS2, and automated file-watching mechanisms for ACH and bank-file processing.
Cryptographic Lifecycle:
Overseeing the high-stakes refresh of VISA/MC certificates, mTLS configurations, and third-party CSR procurement.
Compliance:
Ensuring all automation (Ansible/Git Lab) meets rigorous PCI-DSS and financial audit standards.

Leadership & People Management

Team Evolution:
Recruit, mentor, and lead a high-performing team of Site Reliability Engineers, defining career paths and performance standards.
Strategic Resource Planning:
Manage team capacity, budgets, and vendor relationships to ensure the platform roadmap aligns with organizational growth.

Preferred Certifications

AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional / Cloud Ops – Associate
CISSP / AWS Security Specialty
Splunk Architect / Dynatrace Professional
Red Hat Specialist in Ansible / Git Lab Certified Professional

Soft Skills & Leadership

The 'Liaison' Factor:
Ability to translate complex infrastructure needs to C-suite stakeholders.
Mentorship: A track record of leveling up mid-level and senior engineers.
Systems Thinking:
The ability to see the 'big picture' and understand how a change in the build pipeline impacts the end-user experience.