DevOps Engineer

Overview

The Dev Ops Engineer will play a crucial role in advancing the CDC Foundation’s mission by providing engineering and technical guidance for the design, planning, development, and delivery of critical applications in a public health organization. This role is aligned to the Workforce Acceleration Initiative (WAI). WAI is a federally funded CDC Foundation program with the goal of helping the nation’s public health agencies by providing them with the technology and data experts they need to accelerate their information system improvements.

Working within Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH), Bureau of Information Technology (IT) and the Office of Informatics & Data Analytics (OIDA), the Dev Ops Engineer will support ADPH’s transition from NBS6 to NBS7 by modernizing deployment, configuration, and maintenance processes. This includes implementing automated, repeatable deployment pipelines and improving system reliability within ADPH’s on-premise infrastructure environment.

The Dev Ops Engineer will be hired by the CDC Foundation and assigned to the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH), Bureau of Information Technology (IT) and the Office of Informatics & Data Analytics (OIDA). This position is eligible for a fully remote work arrangement for U.S. based candidates.

• Design and implement an on-premise, containerized infrastructure to support deployment of NBS 7.
• Provision and configure servers, storage, and networking required for the containerized environment.
• Implement container orchestration, configuration management, and automated deployment pipelines.
• Assist application team in deploying code regularly and as automatically as possible.
• Conduct load tests to ensure the application is ready to handle projected user traffic.
• Automate build, test, deployment, and rollback processes to improve reliability and reduce downtime.
• Monitor system performance, availability, and resource utilization; address stability issues proactively.
• Lead postmortem discussions and drive continuous improvement to prevent similar outages when issues are encountered.
• Conduct technology evaluations and provide architectural guidance.
• Explain product or services to people who have varying levels of technical knowledge.
• Review code and consult with other developers on new features and the implications for application performance.
• Collaborate with surveillance, laboratory, and informatics staff to validate workflows and system behavior.
• Document architecture and deployment procedures for long‑term support.
• Support knowledge transfer to existing ADPH IT staff to ensure sustainability after project completion.
• Up to 10% domestic travel may be required.

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field.
• Minimum of five (5) years of experience in complex technology implementations in a product‑centric environment.
• Experience with developing software, with emphasis on reliability, automation, testing, measuring, and scaling infrastructure.
• Knowledge and experience in deployment and network operations, or systems administration including scripting, coding and development that focuses on improving the planning, testing and deployment.
• Experience with modern application deployment and orchestration technologies, such as containerization and orchestration platforms including Docker and Kubernetes.
• Proficiency and experience in programming languages such as Java or JavaScript.
• Integration experience using and building APIs.
• Experience working with relational databases like SQL Server.
• Experience with search, indexing, and analytics platforms used to support high‑performance applications, such as Elasticsearch.
• Experience with distributed messaging and streaming technologies used for system integration and data flow, such as Apache Kafka.
• Experience with identity, access management, and authentication frameworks for secure application environments, such as Keycloak.
• Experience working with cloud‑native or hybrid infrastructure tools and services that support scalable, resilient system architectures.
• Ability to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and…