Senior DevOps Engineer - AWS Modernization & IaC Expert in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
This role sits squarely in the high-demand DevOps/Cloud Infrastructure segment, with a strong emphasis on Terraform, AWS, and enterprise-scale reliability engineering. The skill set developed here — IaC, CI/CD pipelines, big data platform infrastructure (EMR, Redshift, SageMaker) — is among the most sought-after in the cloud market through 2025 and beyond.
Compensation signal: No salary is listed, which is common for consulting-style freelance roles. U.S. market rates for senior DevOps engineers at this experience level (4+ years Terraform, AWS) typically range from $90–$150/hr contract, or $140K–$180K annually. The absence of a stated rate warrants direct clarification before committing.
Green flags:
- Aedeon's AI layer means your time is spent on high-judgment work, not repetitive discovery — accelerates skill development in architecture and decision-making.
- Client-facing ownership with committed delivery dates builds a strong portfolio of shipped, production-grade outcomes — valuable for future senior roles.
- Exposure to enterprise data platforms (EMR, Redshift, SageMaker) opens doors into data engineering and MLOps adjacent paths.
Yellow flags:
- Freelance/contract structure means no benefits, no equity, and no employment stability — weigh this against the rate premium typically associated with contract work.
- "Forward-deployed" and "committed dates" language signals a high-accountability, delivery-pressure culture. Strong performers thrive; those needing structured mentorship may find it lean.
- AWS certifications are preferred but not required — a gap worth closing if you don't have them, as they directly improve contract rates.
Mactores is the agent-native AWS modernization firm. Most modernization work doesn't ship — it stalls in pilots, slips a year, or lands at three times the budget. We exist to ship it: production systems running, legacy retired, outcomes measured. Our delivery is built on Aedeon, the agent platform built by Mactores' founders' sister company, which absorbs the repetitive 60–70% of engagement work — discovery, dependency mapping, validation, test generation — that traditional consulting bills human hours against. Forward-deployed engineers own the rest: architecture, judgment, and cutover, on dates we commit to in the contract.
This freelance role sits in our infrastructure modernization work under the Application & Database Modernization pillar: moving legacy infrastructure and large enterprise workloads to AWS, and making the resulting platforms boring to operate. Customers come to us with hand-built environments, release cycles that depend on heroics, and big data workloads that outgrew their monitoring years ago.
You'll work as a hands-on DevOps engineer on customer deployments — Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, automated monitoring — for enterprise applications, customer applications, and big data workloads. Aedeon absorbs the discovery and validation grind; your billed hours go to the automation and reliability engineering that gets releases out and keeps them out. It's client-facing work: you set customer expectations and then meet them.
What You Will Do
- Automate infrastructure creation using Terraform and AWS CloudFormation.
- Run application configuration management and enable Infrastructure as Code through deployment tools.
- Own and manage the build and release cycle for customer projects.
- Share responsibility for deploying releases and other operations and maintenance activities.
- Improve operations infrastructure: Jenkins clusters, Bitbucket, monitoring tools (Consul), and metrics tools like Graphite and Grafana.
- Provide operational support for the engineering team and help migrate legacy infrastructure to the cloud.
- Establish and enforce operational best practices, including monitoring for automated system health checks.
- Build scalable infrastructure for data platforms — Amazon EMR, Redshift, and SageMaker.
- Build the CI pipeline, and train and guide the team in DevOps practices.
What We Are Looking For
- 4+ years of experience using Terraform for IaC.
- 4+ years of configuration management and engineering for large-scale customers, ideally supporting an Agile development process.
- 4+ years of Linux or Windows administration experience.
- 4+ years with version control systems (git), including branching and merging strategies.
- 2+ years of experience working with AWS infrastructure and platform services.
- 2+ years of experience with cloud automation tools (Ansible, Chef).
- Exposure to container services on AWS: Kubernetes, ECS, and EKS.
- A proactive eye for what can be made more reliable — and the follow-through to make it so.
Preferred Qualifications
- Expertise across multiple cloud providers: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform.
- AWS Solutions Architect Professional or Associate certification.
- AWS DevOps Professional certification.
How We Work
We run a forward-deployed model: engineers embed with delivery teams, own their piece of the outcome, and ship against committed dates. This is a remote freelance engagement, so we'll be straight about the shape: you work project-by-project inside that model, with Aedeon absorbing the repetitive layer so your time goes to infrastructure judgment, not checklist work. You'll work independently, coordinate closely with the engagement team, and your automation will carry production traffic for named customers.
Life at Mactores
We care about creating a culture that makes a real difference in the lives of every Mactorian. Our 10 Core Leadership Principles honor Decision-making, Leadership, Collaboration, and Curiosity:
- Be one step ahead
- Deliver the best
- Be bold
- Pay attention to the detail
- Enjoy the challenge
- Be curious and take action
- Take leadership
- Own it
- Deliver value
- Be collaborative
Read more about the work culture at https://mactores.com/careers
The Path to Joining the Mactores Team
Mactores' recruitment process is structured around three distinct stages:
- Pre-Employment Assessment: A series of evaluations of your technical proficiency and suitability for the role.
- Managerial Interview: The hiring manager engages with you in multiple discussions (30 minutes to an hour each), covering technical skills, hands-on experience, leadership potential, and communication.
- HR Discussion: A 30-minute session to discuss the offer and next steps with a member of the HR team.
Mactores provides equal opportunities in all employment practices. We don't discriminate based on race, religion, gender, national origin, age, disability, marital status, military status, genetic information, or any other category protected by federal, state, and local laws.
Note: Please answer as many questions as possible with this application to accelerate the hiring process.
Frequently Asked Questions
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