Principal DevOps Engineer

We’re looking for a well-rounded, seasoned Principal DevOps Engineer to join Coconut! Reporting to our VP of Engineering, you will work together with the CTO, Product, and Security to improve the product and address the most difficult technical challenges. You will represent senior technical leadership within our organization. You should have the desire to solve problems, mentor, and elevate our devops and engineering team.

This role asks that you develop a deep understanding of our infrastructure, and not only rely on your advanced technical skills, but also on the ability to collaborate effectively across multiple teams. A Principal DevOps Engineer should have the instinct to anticipate needs and understand the broader technical vision of the product. A Principal DevOps Engineer also reaches beyond immediate technical needs, but should also be looking for ways to have a broader impact. The successful candidate for this role will have a strong understanding of software development practices, architecture, stay up to date with the latest best practices in devops, and possess the ability to identify technical and delivery dysfunctions and champion solutions to address them.

We don’t need you to be an expert in our stack but you must be willing to learn as you go and you’ll have our full support on this journey.

• We innovate on top of a modern AWS environment, driven with Terraform, utilizing a RESTful architecture, backed by relational DBs (MariaDB / MySQL and PostgreSQL) and deployed using Docker and Kubernetes.


• We don't follow rigid Scrum, but we do work in an agile, iterative way, and continuously improve and implement what works for us


• Blameless culture and a continuous improvement mindset

YOU’RE FIRED UP TO

Demonstrate Technical Ownership 

• Contribute to determining the performance, scalability, and reliability of our products


• Lead the research, scoping, design, and planning of devops initiatives with realistic implementation schedules


• Help senior engineering leaders drive department goals, create strategic roadmaps, and identify priorities to meet business objectives


• Contribute to and guide architecture 


• Participate in the development and testing of functionality in collaboration with team members, while providing technical advice and guidance


• Provide technical documentation for efficient maintenance, knowledge transfer, and decision making


• Articulate status/dependencies/blockers proactively and effectively, while subscribing to a customer-first approach to devops practices


• Deep dive and uncover or foresee technology and organizational needs 


• Troubleshoot and solve technical problems of the highest scope, complexity, and ambiguity for your department


• Where possible, become the center for innovative ideas and opportunities between several teams, with a willingness to experiment and confront large and complex problems


• Analyze devops challenges and develop solutions to resolve issues

Be a Nomad (sort of)

• Our DevOps team will be your “home,” but you may need to pack your toolkit and do work across the engineering  teams as the need calls for it 


• With time, you’ll become a Coconut SME in specific product areas and drive critical objectives and projects within those areas focusing on our business needs


• Collaborate and make recommendations across several teams, and help the team  make evidence-based decisions in alignment with our strategic plans


• Work with engineering managers to understand areas of concern and help identify solutions

Be a Leader 

• Lead by example - act in accordance with our CHEERS values


• Mentor, coach, and elevate the members of the devops and engineering team 


• Guide members to remove blockers and encourage collaboration 


• Demonstrate and set technical standards and best practices, as if creating a center of excellence within the devops department


• Have the desire to constantly improve your own technical and product knowledge, and empower other engineers to do the same 


• Review devops work, provide critical feedback, even managing up when necessary, to all members of the team

• Identify and determine improvements in our SDLC and how the product and engineering teams operate

• Contribute to the hiring, onboarding, and development of new team members 


• Provide technical expertise and guidance to the devops team improving quality of deliverables

WHAT YOU BRING TO THE TEAM

• 15+ years proven experience in a DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering capacity 


• Mastery at ramping up quickly in new tools and frameworks


• Expertise in cloud environments (AWS would be preferred)


• Extensive experience with:




• Implementing and managing Kubernetes


• Cloud infrastructure


• CI/CD




• Fluency in the use of monitoring tools


• Strong background in Linux / Unix Administration 


• Ability to use a wide variety of open source technologies and cloud services to improve the continuous deployment process


• A solid understanding of code and script (PHP, Python, Perl and/or Ruby) 


• Strong working experience with server architecture, DNS, ipv4/ipv6, acl


• MariaDB / MySQL and Redis management


• Strong understanding of best practices or technologies for ingesting webhook traffic


• Strong critical thinker with problem solving aptitude


• Exceptional communication skills - be able to convey your thoughts, ideas, and projects effectively across the organization; even to non technical audiences


• Ability to create thorough technical documentation and articulate design decisions driving alignment throughout the department and company (as needed)


• Ability to connect the dots between systems and problems and communicate the impacts and recommendations to the team


• The desire to be a large proponent of an organization’s engineering and devops culture and influence the adoption of better practices


• Proven leadership skills - having mentored and unblocked members on a team, as well as encourage them to strive for best practices


• Experience in or knowledge of the Financial Industry would be a bonus