Senior Cloud Engineer

The Role

Our enterprise software team builds the digital backbone that powers K2 Space's satellite design, manufacturing, and mission operations. We develop tools that connect engineering, production, and mission control into a seamless ecosystem — enabling our hardware to get from concept to orbit faster than ever before.

As we continue to grow, we're looking for a Cloud Engineer who shares our vision: someone who doesn't just maintain cloud infrastructure — but thinks deeply about scalability, security, reliability, and how cloud systems power space-grade engineering and operations.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, deploy, and maintain cloud infrastructure supporting mission-critical workloads (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS) across production, staging, and development environments.
• Define and implement infrastructure-as-code (IaC) automation (Terraform, ARM/Bicep, etc.), CI/CD pipelines, configuration management, and other automation tooling to enable rapid, reproducible, and secure deployments.
• Collaborate with software, mission-ops, and DevOps teams to integrate cloud architecture into our development lifecycle (DevSecOps — from build to launch).
• Establish and manage identity and access management (IAM), role-based access, encryption, network security, secrets management, and compliance controls.
• Monitor and maintain the health, performance, and cost-effectiveness of cloud services; implement logging, monitoring, alerting, and capacity planning.
• Perform security assessments, threat modeling, vulnerability scans, compliance audits; develop mitigation strategies and drive best practices.
• Create clear documentation of architectures, relevant procedures, security policies, and infrastructure diagrams — and communicate across teams and stakeholders.
• Stay on top of cloud security threats, emerging technologies, and compliance requirements — and champion proactive improvements in our cloud posture.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field — or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years (senior-level) hands-on experience managing cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP or similar), preferably across multiple cloud platforms.
• Strong proficiency with IaC tools (Terraform, ARM/Bicep, CloudFormation, etc.), CI/CD, configuration management, and scripting (e.g. Python, Bash, PowerShell).
• Solid understanding of cloud-native services (VMs, containers/Kubernetes, serverless, databases, networking, storage) and ability to design scalable, resilient architectures.
• Experience with container orchestration systems (Kubernetes, Docker) and modern deployment workflows.
• Deep knowledge of security best practices: IAM, encryption, network security (firewalls, VNets), secrets management, monitoring, logging, and compliance frameworks.
• Familiarity with (or willingness to learn) compliance regimes relevant to defense/space sector (e.g., FedRAMP, CMMC, ITAR, government-cloud environments) — especially if working on sensitive or government-facing projects.
• Excellent problem-solving skills, strong communication (verbal + writing), ability to work in cross-functional teams, and comfort working in a fast-paced, mission-driven startup environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced cloud certifications (e.g. AWS Solutions Architect/DevOps, Azure Administrator/DevOps/Security, Kubernetes certifications)
• Experience with hybrid clouds / Gov-cloud environments / regulated-space-industry compliance
• Prior experience supporting aerospace, defense, or highly regulated workloads
• Familiarity with GitOps workflows, MLOps pipelines, container-security tooling, secrets vaults (e.g. HashiCorp Vault), log aggregators / monitoring systems (e.g. ELK, Splunk), and automated incident response / forensics pipelines.

Compensation and Benefits:

• Base salary range for this role is $165,000 - $215,000 + equity in the company
• Salary will be based on several factors including, but not limited to: knowledge and skills, education, and experience level
• Comprehensive benefits package including paid time off, medical/dental/vision/ coverage, life insurance, paid parental leave, and many other perks