AWS DevOps Specialist

Focus School Software is a fast-growing school management software company. We thrive on creating some of the most innovative features on the market today, helping educators to meet their evolving needs in classrooms, district management, state reporting compliance, and other facets of student-centered education and technology.

We are seeking an experienced and proactive AWS DevOps Specialist to join our growing infrastructure team. This role is ideal for someone passionate about automation, cloud infrastructure, and scalable, secure systems. The ideal candidate brings expertise in AWS services, infrastructure as code, cost reduction strategies and DevOps best practices. You will play a key role in improving system performance, reliability, and security, while contributing to CI/CD pipelines and participating in an on-call rotation. This is a great opportunity for anyone who has a multitude of skills in DevOps and System Administration and can wear many hats and loves problem solving.

Key Responsibilities

• Automation & Configuration Management

• Design, develop, and maintain automation using Ansible and Ansible Tower.

• Deploy and configure RHEL based systems.

• Database maintenance and performance, routing, pooling and role management.

• Cloud Infrastructure (AWS)

• Architect and manage services including RDS (PostgreSQL), EC2, EKS, CloudFormation, CloudFront, GuardDuty, AWS VPN, AWS AD, and more.

• Implement Autoscaling strategies and container orchestration with EC2 Autoscaling or EKS. Continuously monitor performance and feedback on systems.

• Monitor and improve database performance, sharding strategies, and health metrics.

• Monitor backups and maintain recovery point objectives for disaster recovery.

• Security & Compliance

• Support SOC II compliance initiatives through infrastructure hardening, monitoring, and alerting.

• Leverage AWS security tools and best practices to ensure compliance and threat mitigation.

• Networking & Connectivity

• Manage VPCs, subnets, security groups, VPNs, and endpoint connectivity for both internal and external integrations.

• Managing routes, DNS and VPN connectivity. Help internal users maintain their VPN connections.

• Cost Optimization

• Analyze AWS billing, usage reports, and recommend cost-saving strategies.

• DevOps & CI/CD

• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, enabling delivery of automation code from development to production.

• Ensure high availability and zero-downtime deployments through automation and best practices.

• Develop and maintain local dev environments for developers.

• Collaboration & Culture

• Work cooperatively in cross-functional teams, embracing a culture where the best ideas win.

• Proactively identify infrastructure problems and lead with creative, scalable solutions.

• Endpoint & Systems Management

• Oversee and manage end-user systems and infrastructure endpoints to maintain security and stability.

• Patch management and remediation, ensure established timelines and policies are followed.

• On-Call Participation

• Participate in an on-call rotation to respond to production incidents and infrastructure issues.

Requirements:

• Ansible, Ansible Tower, working in RHEL based environments.

• Linux/RHEL expert, be able to design, deploy and fix everything from a systemd service to managing SFTP.

• Ability to manage a Git repository, and perform peer review on automation code.

• Monitoring tools such as Splunk, Grafana or similar.

• Working knowledge of NGINX, basic webserver stacks.

• Understanding of AWS, particularly RDS (PostgreSQL), CloudFormation, EC2, EKS

• Kubernetes and containerization

• Experience with database sharding and performance tuning

• CI/CD pipeline design and implementation

• Familiarity with SOC II compliance frameworks

• Experience managing AWS networking, VPNs, and AWS AD

• Security-first mindset with experience using AWS Org, AWS Tower, CloudFront, and related tools to ensure compliance.

• Strong interpersonal skills with a collaborative mindset.

Nice-to-Have:

• LAMP/LNPP Stack experience

• SVN Familiarity

• Active Directory experience, basic Windows management

• Experience with endpoint management platforms

• Background in proactive monitoring/observability tooling

• Prior involvement in security audits or compliance initiatives

Focus School Software’s compensation package offers the following benefits:

• Medical Insurance
• Dental/Vision Insurance
• Life Insurance
• Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
• 401(k) after 6 months
• Paid Holidays
• Paid Vacation and Sick Time
• Remote Position