Senior Staff DevOps Engineer – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – Job Description Breakdown & Key Takeaways
Here’s a breakdown of teh job description, highlighting key aspects and what St. Jude is looking for.I’ve categorized it for clarity.
1.Core Role & Responsibilities:
* Platform Reliability & Proactive Monitoring: This is the core focus.The role is about ensuring the St.Jude Cloud platform is highly available, performant, and secure. A significant part of this is building and maintaining robust alerting rules.
* Cloud Infrastructure & Automation: Designing, building, and maintaining the cloud infrastructure (Azure) using Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
* Application Orchestration: Managing and scaling applications deployed on Kubernetes.
* CI/CD Pipeline management: Maintaining and improving the CI/CD pipelines.
* Staying Current: Continuously researching and evaluating new technologies to keep the platform cutting-edge.
* Collaboration: Working with various teams (Computational Biology, basic/clinical departments) to support thier needs.
* Troubleshooting & Incident Response: Responding to and resolving platform issues.
2. Technical Skills – MUST HAVES & STRONG PREFERENCES:
* Essential (Based on repeated mentions & “highly preferred”):
* Kubernetes: Deep understanding and practical experience.
* Docker & Helm: essential for containerization and application packaging.
* CI/CD: Experience with Github Actions (specifically mentioned) or similar tools.
* Cloud (Azure): Strong preference, experience with other clouds is valuable.
* IaC (Terraform): Strong preference, experience with other tools is valuable.
* Monitoring & Alerting (Datadog): strong preference, experience with other tools is valuable.
* Highly Desirable:
* Istio/Service Mesh: Experience with service mesh technologies.
* GitOps (FluxCD): Exposure to GitOps principles and tools.
* Toolset Familiarity: They explicitly state familiarity with most of their toolset is expected. This includes:
* Azure Infrastructure (Terraform, Crossplane)
* Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
* Istio & Cilium
* Docker & Helm
* Github & Actions
* Grafana, Datadog (or similar)
3. Soft Skills & Environment:
* Proactive: The emphasis on proactive monitoring and alerting suggests they want someone who anticipates problems,not just reacts to them.
* Collaborative: The description highlights a highly interactive and collaborative environment.
* Problem Solver: Troubleshooting and incident response are key responsibilities.
* Continuous Learner: The need to stay aware of emerging technologies is crucial.
4. Qualifications:
* Education: Bachelor’s degree in a related field (Computer Science, Data Science, etc.). Master’s preferred.
* Experience:
* 8+ years with a Bachelor’s
* 6+ years with a Master’s
5. Crucial Notes:
* Remote Work: The position may be eligible for remote work.
* Compensation: $114,400 – $216,320 per year (estimate).
* location: Memphis, TN (relocation assistance available).
* No Search Firms: They explicitly state they do not work with unsolicited search firm submissions.
* Impactful Work: The role supports cutting-edge research in pediatric cancer, which is a strong motivator for many.
In essence, St. Jude is looking for a seasoned DevOps engineer with a strong focus on Kubernetes, Azure, and automation, who can build and maintain a highly reliable and scalable cloud platform to support critical research. They want someone proactive, collaborative, and eager to learn.
