Senior DevOps Automation Engineer

Excella is a leading provider of Agile software development and data and analytics solutions to clients in the federal, commercial and non-profit sectors. We believe that great work leads to great things –- our experts measure success by the positive impact we make on our clients, community, and colleagues. We are growing fast and need passionate, innovative people who love working with technology and are ready to make an impact. Here's what you can expect from us:

• Workplace sites look different for everyone – whether it’s your home or the office, we believe in a flexible work/life balance that supports you regardless of your location. We offer a home office allowance that can be used for home office furniture/equipment, a daily pass for a coworking space, etc. Our commute reimbursement plan has you covered for whether you bike, Metro, or drive to work.
• We offer top of industry medical, dental, and vision benefits with multiple options to choose from such as an employer-contributed health savings account, infertility coverage, and orthodontia so you can select the plan that works best for you.
• Regardless of what stage of life you’re in, Excella wants to support you. We provide 8 weeks of Parental Leave, discounted pet insurance, and a Care.com membership with 3 back-up emergency child or elder care days annually – all available to you on your first day.
• Starting day one, every employee is bonus eligible and receives 15 days of paid vacation, 6 federal holidays, and 4 floating holidays.
• Doing your best work means having the best tools! Excella’s TechEleX program provides you with multiple options to suit your technology needs. Choose between a variety of Mac or PC devices, and to ensure your hardware remains current, at the end of a 3-year period Excella will replace your existing computer with a new model from the program. Plus, we’ll even give you the original device to keep for your personal use!
• Excella provides a Workplace Allowance to offset both the costs to maintain a distributed work environment and to enhance your workplace wellness. Excella will reimburse all full-time Excellians for up to $500 in expenses incurred during the calendar year.
• Diversity and inclusion matter. Excella created and continues to support employee led-affinity groups and the Inclusion Diversity Equity Ambassador (IDEA) team, a cross-functional employee-led initiative to continually foster innovation and increase inclusion within Excella.
• We'll invest in your career by providing 3 days of paid professional development every year, including travel and registration fees to attend classes and conferences.
• We encourage mindfulness and overall well-being through employee wellness events, a HeadSpace membership, as well as access to TalkSpace and mental health coverage through our medical plans.

Overview

Senior DevOps Automation Engineers at Excella are leaders and experts at designing and implementing Continuous Delivery (CD) solutions.  

You might be the right person for this role if:

• You enjoy working in a CD environment where software is maintained in a deployable state throughout its lifecycle, and the team prioritizes keeping the software in a deployable state over working on new features
• Fast feedback on the quality and 'deployability' of the system is available to all team members and then reports are made that the system isn't deployable, fixes are made quickly
• Software can be deployed to production or end users at any time, on demand

Responsibilities

We are looking for DevOps Automation Engineers with demonstrated experience in the following areas: 

• Version Control: Storing all application code, system configuration, infrastructure code, and deployment scripts in version control
• Deployment Automation: Creating automated and repeatable deployment scripts for all changes to infrastructure, applications, and security 
• Continuous Integration (CI): Creating solutions that upon changes to code trigger build processes that involve running tests to ensure the state of the code has not degraded. If these builds fail it should result in reliable and relevant notifications to teams capable of fixing the builds  
• Trunk-based Development: Working with fewer than three active branches at any time with very short lifetimes per branch (less than one day)
• Test Automation: Creating solutions with reliable automated tests in place when changes occur to system configuration, deployment scripts, infrastructure, or security features. When these tests pass teams are confident these changes can be released and when these tests fail a real defect is indicated. Time is invested in finding reliable test suites and unreliable tests are placed into a quarantine test suite and are run independently of the standard continuous integration process
• Test Data Management: Designing solutions with adequate test data to run fully automated test suites and acquire test data for running tests on demand. Working with engineers in other capability areas such as security, data science, data engineering, and software development to integrate such solutions into automation pipelines
• Security: Integrating security into the design and testing phases of software development. This includes security reviews of applications, collaborating with the InfoSec team early in the application design process, and using preapproved security libraries, packages, and testing security features as part of the automated testing suite
• Leadership: Establishing milestones and priorities for work assigned to self and DevOps engineering teams. Defining teams and hierarchies of accountability
• Communication: Presenting technical and non-technical information articulately to both internal and external teams and stakeholders 
• Accountability: Establishing accountability for multiple work projects and teams. Accepting full responsibility for the execution of projects and tasks   

Qualifications

At Excella we embrace experimentation and innovation, we choose tools that our engineers enjoy working with and believe that democratizing technical decisions allows teams to do work which is challenging and meaningful. Successful candidates should be able to clearly demonstrate skill with tools in the following areas: 

• Modern programming languages: Solving automation problems using tools such as: Python, Ruby, Go, Node.js, C# 
• Automation Pipelines: Creating and deploying as code changes to automation pipelines such as GitLab, Jenkins, Bamboo, CircleCI, TravisCI 
• Programmatic Operating System Manipulation: Using command line tools such as Bash or PowerShell to operate and debug issues with modern operating systems. Skills should include package management, service configuration, logging, process / resource monitoring, network configuration
• Configuration Management: Configuring and creating CI/CD pipelines using configuration management tools such as: Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Packer 
• Leadership: Experience serving as a key subject-matter expert or thought leader to individuals to internal and external teams. Project planning and execution of enterprise level automation solutions in an Agile environment. Driving achievable technical outcomes through hands-on technical subject matter expertise
• Cloud Providers: Relevant work experience in Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Azure. Should demonstrate skill with network and access security and the deployment via code of modern web and data applications and their constituent infrastructure 
• Containerization and Container Orchestration: Creating, deploying, and orchestrating code changes using tools such as: Docker, Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Elastic Container Service
• Understanding of DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) and the capabilities within the DORA capability catalog is encouraged
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Excella is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by law. Excella is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. To request reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, contact Recruiting@excella.com or 703-840-8600.

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