About Element 84

Element 84 is a woman-owned small business that works with public, private, and non-profit sector clients to develop geospatial data processing pipelines & build software that helps answer big questions about our health, our infrastructure, and our changing planet. We solve challenging problems across a wide range of industries, but our super power is cloud-based geospatial data processing, remote sensing, and Earth science systems. Our headquarters is located in Alexandria, VA and we have a satellite office in Philadelphia, PA. Element 84 also supports a large remote workforce from a variety of other states.

A Few Other Things You Should Know

1. Element 84's values are: We Invest in Each Other, We are Reliable, and Our Work Benefits our World.

2. Element 84 works on meaningful projects that are challenging—from a technical, people, and team perspective. We make an impact on large projects through our leadership and expertise, both formal and informal.

3. Element 84 values life outside of work. We offer parental leave for everyone and support each other through family challenges like medical problems, adoptions, and new babies.

4. Element 84 has had a flexible work schedule since our founding in 2010.

5. Element 84 is committed to fostering a culture of curiosity and respect for all individuals as we constantly strive to create a work environment where everyone feels welcome and supported.

About You

You are curious about the world, are constantly learning, driven to lead (formally or informally), and have a strong work ethic. You're interested in solving impactful problems in science, medicine, and other projects that have a societal good. You can work independently or with a team, prioritize your projects, and be effective without micromanagement.

You'll care about writing. Our team is remote and written communication is essential. In addition to caring about a well-crafted email and a succinct conference abstract, you understand that good writing is good design and engineering.

About the Role

A talented DevOps engineer with a strong Kubernetes focus is needed on the Element 84 team to support a commercial client in their modernization and cloud migration efforts. You will be a key contributor to the architecture, design, implementation, and launch of a complex system that is global in scope, used by some of the largest companies in the world and ultimately makes a positive difference in the lives of everyday people. An ideal candidate for this role is excited by the challenge of converting lofty ideas into robust, performant, and highly-maintainable systems, takes great pride in their craftsmanship, and is eager to take ownership of critical components.

What You’ll Do

• Participate in all aspects of the software and data product development lifecycle from user story generation, through design, development, automated testing and operational support

• Improve quality by actively participating in code-reviews and adhering to team quality standards

• Work alongside other engineers on the team to elevate technology and consistently apply best practices

• Own the execution of medium-to-large sized features with higher-level technical support

• Describe and document the details of your work fluidly and accurately for technical peers and non-technical stakeholders

• Think holistically about the application and build with an eye towards long term maintainability and efficiency

• Collaboratively provide estimates and other input to the client, project managers, or others about features to help determine their feasibility, complexity, cost, and priority level

• Contribute to a culture of positivity, curiosity, and respect for all individuals

Qualifications

Here are the guidelines we're looking at to gauge experience and skillset:

Required Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience as a Software, Data or DevOps Engineer and 3+ years of experience with AWS

• Experience building enterprise scale applications with Kubernetes and helm charts

• Experience building and operating Kubernetes via EKS in Amazon Web Services

• Deep Linux proficiency with hands-on experience diagnosing and resolving production Kubernetes incidents at the node and kernel level.

• Experience migrating data stores such as solr, Aerospike or others to the cloud

• Experience with hybrid deployments and operations between on-premise and cloud (e.g. hybrid EKS, database synchronization)

• Experience with GitOps / infrastructure-as-code practices (Cloudformation, Terraform, CDK)

• Experience with cloud architecture patterns and tradeoffs (Serverless, Docker, Kubernetes, etc.)

• Experience with build and deployment automation (Harness, GitLab, Ansible, etc.)

• Experience with infrastructure and application monitoring tools, such as CloudWatch, OpenTelemetry, Honeycomb, AWS Config, Kibana, Splunk, Grafana, etc.

• Firm commitment to and experience with automated testing and continuous integration

• Proponent of continuous improvement and willing to bring new ideas to the team

• Outstanding all-round communication skills and ability to work collaboratively and proficiently in a remote environment

• Energetic, self-motivated, team player used to working in a scrum environment

• Industry Certification: AWS Associate-level certification is required. If not currently held, the candidate must successfully obtain this certification within 12 months of their start date.

• Bachelor's Degree in a technical major, such as Computer Science or Engineering (will consider equivalent professional experience in lieu of degree)

• Location Note: This is a remote position and candidates need to reside within a local travel distance (100 miles or less) of our primary East Coast hubs (Alexandria, VA and Philadelphia, PA). Local residency is required to facilitate an in-person final interview, identity verification, and periodic in-person team collaboration.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building and operating Kubernetes in an on-premise environment

• Experience with Databricks

• Experience with Spring Boot

• Experience with Cloudera, Spark, Hive and Kafka

• Financial services industry experience or familiarity with regulated data environments

• Experience with authentication and authorization

• Experience developing on MacOS X
  

This position requires that applicants be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or at any time in the future, and be able to pass a general background check.

Additional Information

Benefits

Paying attention to who we are as a company–people, family members, friends, and colleagues–is our primary focus at Element 84. There are lots of ways to run a company, and, for us, we prioritize wanting to come to work, being around people we enjoy, taking on big things with people you trust, and sharing our achievements as a team.

• You’ll get credit when things go right and we’ll have your back when things go wrong.

• We only take on work that is challenging and right for us. There are projects we will turn down and the team has a say.

• We may be a small company, but we have big company benefits meant to support the idea that we're here for the long term and happiness comes from much more than where you work.

• We have an extraordinary retention rate because we hire extraordinary people. We hope that’s you.

The salary range for this position is $145,000 - $175,000. Actual compensation offered to candidate will be finalized at offer and may be above or below the posted range due to skill level, experience, industry-specific knowledge, education/certifications, or geographic location. Base salary represents just one component of the Element 84 total compensation package. Employees will also receive a number of benefits as listed below. Other compensation for this position may include bonus eligibility (dependent on employee performance and company profits).

This is a full time, salaried position. Please submit your information, resume and cover letter if you are interested. Remote candidates are encouraged, but your home office must be less than 100 miles from either Element 84’s Alexandria, VA or Philadelphia, PA hub.

Benefits Offered

• Competitive medical, dental and vision benefits

• Life Insurance, Short & Long Term disability insurance

• Voluntary Accident, Critical Illness & Hospital Insurance

• 401(k) and Roth 401(k) retirement plans with a fixed 3% of salary employer contributions (paid regardless of employee participation)

• Health savings account with a company contribution

• Flexible spending accounts (medical, dependent care and transportation)

• Company-paid parental leave after one year of employment

• Flexible work schedules

• Paid employee assistance program

• 6 paid floating holidays

• 4 weeks + 1 day paid Vacation Time Off per calendar year (prorated first year)

• 40 hours paid Sick Leave

• Cell phone stipend

Element 84 is an equal opportunity employer.