Senior DevOps Engineer

Join Our Team and Make a Difference in Higher Education!

At the System Administration office at the University of Colorado, we are dedicated to building a workplace where everyone feels valued, supported, and empowered to thrive. Our office is committed to fostering a culture where employees find community, a sense of belonging, and the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to our mission and purpose.  

By joining our team, you’ll have a direct impact on shaping the future of higher education. In addition to the Office of the Board of Regents, the University of Colorado’s system administration includes 19 units that provide essential services to CU’s campuses in Aurora, Boulder, Colorado Springs, and Denver, as well as the Office of the President. While not a part of any one campus, we are proud to serve in the centralized office for the University system. Together, we ensure CU continues to deliver outstanding education, groundbreaking research, and valuable service to our communities.

We believe in creating an environment where the unique experiences and perspectives of everyone are embraced, enriching the work we do and the strategic outcomes we pursue. If you’re passionate about making a difference, contributing to a dynamic team, and supporting a mission that matters, we encourage you to apply and be part of our journey.  Learn more about CU System Administration.

Position Summary:

University Information Services (UIS) provides technical services and enterprise applications to the University of Colorado campuses and the Office of the President. UIS is committed to excellence in customer service and technical expertise. Through the development of enterprise applications, UIS supports the University systems used by students, faculty, human resources employees, finance employees, and others.

The Senior DevOps Engineer applies an automation mindset leveraging DevOps tools with the application of technical skills and leadership to the areas of application and infrastructure deployment, patching, and support.  This position will serve as a senior technical expert within the UIS Enterprise Cloud Services group. As a part of the ECS CrossApps Middleware team, the Sr. DevOps Engineer performs installation, configuration, upgrade, and day-to-day operational support of a variety of applications and middleware technologies.

This position designs, builds, and maintains technical environments, supports system rollouts, responds to and troubleshoots escalated operational issues while managing internal and external customer relationships.  This position informs and advises project managers and stakeholders about project plans and implementation, conducts technical analysis, and produces recommendations. This position is also charged with supporting daily operations of these applications, and must also work with the team to automate processes and procedures, create efficiencies, and provide quality business services to our clients and customers.  

This position reports to the Assistant Director of Enterprise Cloud Services and is exempt from the State of Colorado Classified Staff system.

Where You Will Work:

Applicants must be Colorado residents or able to relocate to Colorado within a month of starting employment with University of Colorado System Administration.

This role is eligible to work remotely within Colorado.

Please note, leadership may adjust in-office work requirements with a minimum of three months' notice before any change can be implemented.

Equal Opportunity Statement:

CU is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment. We are committed to creating a workplace where all individuals are treated with respect and dignity, and we encourage individuals from all backgrounds to apply, including protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. 

Duties and Responsibilities:

Duties and responsibilities of the position include, but are not limited to:

• Serve as a senior technical architect and systems integrator for large complex systems and applications, including monitoring, orchestration, and automation.
• Communicate and collaborate with application owners/managers, initiative leaders, and project leadership to clarify requirements, develop work plans, document, and lead technical architecture.
• Apply DevOps methodologies for building and operating highly available, scalable applications and services.
• Evaluate, build and modify automation for deploying applications and services based on DevOps and GitOps principles internally and for external teams
• Serve as a domain architect providing advice and guidance on new technical solutions and/or architectural changes to existing design, particularly as it pertains to the CrossApps Middleware areas of discipline and support.  
• Maintain, upgrade, and extend a library of Ansible playbooks, Bash, and Python scripts.
• Configure applications with GitOps, GitLab deployments, and RESTful APIs.
• Generate monitoring from Ansible inventory variables and other primary sources.
• Prevent drift between environments (e.g. DEV, TEST, STAGE, PROD).
• Enforce operational scalability and availability of applications, patching, and monitoring of applications.
• Configure applications for stability, security, and maintainability using technologies such as cloud, on premise, containerization, and DevOps principles.
• Troubleshoot application issues in collaboration with application owners/managers and enterprise infrastructure staff.
• Debug SSL/TLS
• Respond to and resolve outages and drive postmortems.
• Providing direction and mentoring others in a leading contributor role.
• On-call support and occasional weekend maintenance support.
• Develop standards for configuration, documentation, and management.
• Draft process documentation and internal training to the team.
• Coordinate with infrastructure, identity/access management, integrations, and other service providers in planning and/or executing maintenance windows, evaluating and working toward resolution of impacts on application and authentication portfolio.
• Provide backend support for Oracle Fusion Middleware products and various unique applications.
• Create and maintain base container environments.  
• Apply patches and upgrade applications.  

What We Offer:

Salary: The anticipated hiring range has been established at $110,000.

CU System Administration takes into consideration a combination of the selected candidate’s education, training and experience as it relates to the position, as well as the position’s scope and complexity, internal pay equity and external market value when determining a salary level for potential new employees.

Benefits: With our unparalleled range of benefits, including top-notch healthcare, comprehensive wellness programs, enriching professional development, and a dynamic work-life balance, we ensure your holistic growth and happiness.

• No-cost or low-cost medical & dental plan options, some inclusive of IVF assistance.

• Disability, Life, Vision Insurance options.

• Multiple retirement planning options including a mandatory 401(a) plan where CU contributes 10% of your gross pay, a 401k or 403b plan and a 457 deferred compensation plan.

• Pre-tax savings plans, such as Health care and Dependent care flexible spending accounts.

• Embrace a healthy work-life balance with ample sick and vacation leave, along with at least 12 paid holidays. This includes a dedicated week off for winter break.

• 6 weeks of parental leave to adjust to the joys of parenthood.

• A tuition benefit program for you and/or your dependents.

• Free RTD EcoPass and free onsite parking at our 1800 Grant Street Office.

• Many additional perks & programs with the CU Advantage.

Additional taxable fringe benefits may be available.

For more information on benefits programs, please review our Comprehensive Benefits Guide.

Access our Total Compensation Calculator to see what your total rewards could be at CU.  (This position is a University Staff position)

Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

Please include all relevant experience in your resume to be accurately assessed against these qualifications.  You must meet all minimum requirements at the time of application to be considered for this role.

• Bachelors’ degree from an accredited institution of higher education or equivalent professional experience.  (The educational requirement may be substituted by professional experience on a year-for-year basis).
• Five (5) years’ experience with a combination of the following:
  • Application engineering and automation technologies, based on enterprise architecture standards.
  • Designing, implementing, and supporting, enterprise-ready container orchestration platforms. 
  • Developing and supporting CI/CD pipelines.
  • Experience leveraging industry standards building services in IaaS/PaaS/Cloud environments. 
  • Reading and writing code in multiple languages. 
    Linux systems administration
  • Oracle Fusion Middleware: Java application servers; WebLogic; Oracle Identity Solutions (e.g., OUD, OID, OVD, OIM), and/or Ping Identity; Oracle Service Bus; Oracle
  • Enterprise Data Quality, Oracle SOA Suite
  • Experience working with Tableau, Cognos, Neo4J
  • Experience working with Docker, Rancher 2 and Kubernetes
  • Configuration management and scripting

Preferred Qualifications:

• Seven (7) years’ experience with a combination of the following:
  • Certifications and/or demonstrated experience in major cloud platforms (i.e. AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle Cloud), container orchestration platforms (i.e. K8), and configuration management tools (i.e. Ansible).  
  • Demonstrated experience configuring and utilizing monitoring, alerting and logging solutions, such as Elastic Stack (aka ELK Stack) and Greylog
  • Experience implementing or integrating with standards-based Identity and Service Providers (e.g., OpenID Connect, SAML2)
  • Experience constructing highly secure, reliable, and performant solutions with open-source technologies. 
  • Experience working in a 24x7 operational environment with on-call and production support responsibility.
  • Experience with disaster recovery planning and testing

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

To be successful in this position a candidate will need the following:

• Be a self-starter, quick learner, curious investigator, and a programmer (shell scripting).
• Solid knowledge of networking, Linux (and some Windows) system administration, web servers, application servers, database servers, SSL/TLS, logging, clustering, monitoring, RESTful APIs, and container/orchestration.
• Ability to apply best practices, design patterns, and DevOps / GitOps principles.
• Envision automating everything such that all the organization’s systems could be re-created from a git repo.
• Ability to troubleshoot, resolve, and explain complex problems and discuss trade-offs of potential solutions.  
• Skilled in finding, fixing, repairing, and preventing issues.
• Ability to learn and use new applications and computer languages, including the use of source control
• Ability to work in a twenty-four-seven (24x7) operational environment with on-call and production support responsibilities
• Ability to work remotely while remaining attentive, engaged, responsive, and productive
• Knowledgeable in supporting Enterprise Java applications.
• Strong attention to detail.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

How to Apply:

For full consideration, please attach the following as separate documents to your application: 

1. A cover letter identifying the job specific minimum qualifications you possess and interest in the position.
2. A resume including all relevant experience to be accurately assessed against the qualifications listed in the posting.

Please ensure you check the “Job Specific Attachments” box next to each document on the “Required Documents” page of the application for the appropriate documents to be attached.

Per the Colorado Job Application Fairness Act, you are not required to provide your date of birth, dates of school attendance, or dates of graduation on your resume or cover letter. If an application requires additional materials, such as a transcript or certification, you may redact identifying information relating to your date or birth, dates of school attendance, or dates of graduation.

When to Apply:

For full consideration completed applications must be submitted by November 4, 2026.  Reference checking is a standard step in our hiring process. You may be asked to provide contact information, including email addresses and phone numbers, for up to five references as part of the search process for this position.

*Please note: All application materials must be submitted through CU Careers; emailed materials will not be considered. *

Sponsorship Statement:

We are unable to sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.

Background Check Statement:

The University of Colorado is committed to providing a safe and productive learning and living community. To achieve that goal, we conduct background investigations for all final applicants being considered for employment. Background investigations include a criminal history record check, and when appropriate, a financial and/or motor vehicle history. The Immigration Reform and Control Act requires that a verification of employment eligibility be documented for all new employees by the end of the third day of work. The University of Colorado is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment.

ADA Statement: