• Support and understand the design and implementation/delivery of global, cost effective, enterprise-class cloud based solutions following DevOps practices, while maintaining compliance with all company policies, procedures and standards. 
• Participate in the development of cloud technology roadmaps that align with overall company strategy and vision of re-platforming and/or moving on-premises solutions to public cloud.
• Provide support for all aspects of cloud technologies with a heavy focus on new solution implementation by supporting developers to ensure on-time delivery of new cloud based platforms.  This includes after-hours support, participation in the incident triage, and following a sound troubleshooting process.
• Act as a coach and mentor for less experienced team members. 
• Lead innovation, standardization and automation of cloud deployments within the  organization. 
• Lead within discipline to develop best practices, case studies, training materials, and whitepapers.  Present at Architecture Review Board, Lunch and Learn sessions, and training sessions. 
• Anticipate risks and constraints and proactively work on solutions to address the risk/constraints, escalating as appropriate.   
• Gather requirements, develop the delivery plan for solution and services milestones, managing expectations and coordinating delivery with developers and other client specific team members.         
• Maintain in-depth awareness and fluency of the key features, functions, and/or industry trends around the area of expertise.
• Lead the evaluation process and recommend all product standards for Merkle cloud hosted infrastructure. 
• Manage and prioritize multiple simultaneous incidents and Service Requests and drive resolution to technical incidents following the Merkle Incident Management Process.
• Perform post incident root cause analysis and write the associated RCA document.
• Platform Ownership for cloud based technology. A Platform Owner is responsible for:
• Leading the technology councils for cloud platforms
• Determining and reporting on the availability of cloud platforms
• Monitoring and alerting – Ensure the primary functionality is properly monitored
• Backups and Recovery – Ensure critical data is identified/protected and a recovery model is in place and periodically tested leveraging modern cloud based models (snapshots, versioning, replication)
• Capacity management – Develop capacity models including dynamic/elastic solutions, measure utilization and establish and maintain forecasts
• Incident tracking – Track the incidents that have occurred on the platform and the remediation activities performed
• Develop and present environmental metrics
• Health checks – Periodic evaluation of the platform to ensure it is operating optimally
• Creation and maintenance of product guides
• Lifecycle Management – Ensure that software and cloud platforms are up to date
• Cloud Platform – Ensure that our deployments are supported by the vendor and pro-actively plan for a refresh when required.
• Software – Software follow the N-1 rule for major release
• Roles and responsibilities can span across infrastructure, database, and source code
• Uphold and promote Merkle’s core values and culture
• Provide on-call and after-hours support as required

Measures of Success:

• Consistently deliver Cloud based implementations that exceed customer expectations on-time/budget. 
• Effectively meet tight deadlines as required by various roadmap and operational initiatives
• Successfully resolve technical incidents/service requests with a high level of quality, escalating where appropriate.
• Demonstrate a high level of customer service.
• Participate in the development of Merkle’s technology vision and strategy. 
• Demonstrate the ability to work as part of a team and share knowledge with team members.
• Implementation and adoption of support processes and structures sufficient to ensure system stability and user satisfaction.
• Attain and maintain “expert level” recognition in select areas by IT Leadership and peers. 
• Contribute to the development and evolution of reference architectures.
• Positive recognition as noted on Employee and Customer satisfaction surveys, completed on a periodic basis

Skills/Requirements:

• Expert Knowledge in Amazon Web services components including EC2, S3, ELB Cloudtrail, Data Pipeline. Strong understanding of AWS database offerings such as RDS and Redshift is a plus
• Deep understanding of cloud security concepts including Firewall, VPC’s, Encryption, Authentication and Authorization (SSO, Active Directory/LDAP etc) strategies
• Strong experience with scripting and automation tools, such as Chef, Terraform or Ansible
• Expertise with Linux operating system environment.
• Intermediate level knowledge on  web and DB applications, such as Apache, nginx and MySQL
• Enterprise productization processes, including developing product guides, asset management, data protection, capacity management, performance management, and lifecycle management.
• Enterprise System Management tools.

Demonstrate the ability to:

• Meet project deadlines and manage and prioritize multiple simultaneous projects while adhering to a time allocation model
• Assess the scope and impact of incidents and respond, with a sense of urgency that matches the incident, following appropriate policies and procedures
• Multi-task, prioritize, manage workload and adapt to changing business conditions
• Tolerate stressful situations and remain focused under pressure    
• Effectively communicate at all levels of the organization.     
• Manage through conflict and challenging situations with positive outcomes for the clients and Merkle.     
• Develop and cultivate strategic relationships that benefit IT and Merkle.
• Make decisions and judgments based on standard procedures.
• Demonstrate critical thinking and problem solving skills.
• Contribute to Managed Hosting standards and best practices for processes, procedures, and technical standards.

Experience:

• 5+ years of experience supporting and implementing enterprise-class solutions operating in a 24/7 environment.
• 1+ years professional experience in designing technology solutions
• Certifications within engineering discipline and Cloud industry (AWS, GCP or Azure) certifications are highly desired.

Bachelor’s Degree required in Information Technology or Computer Science

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.