Development Security Operations Engineer III - 531106

Pay Grade/Pay Range:  Minimum: $74,900 - Midpoint: $101,100 (Salaried E12)

Department/Organization: 750501 - Alabama Water Institute (AWI)

Normal Work Schedule: Monday - Friday 8:00am to 5:00pm

Job Summary: The Development Security Operations Engineer III builds and configures containerization deployments across development, staging, and production environments. Maintains and improves CI/CD pipelines for research software platforms and related tools. Oversees software releases including version tagging, changelog maintenance, and deployment verification across multiple repositories. Monitors and maintains systems and tooling for secret scanning and security baseline compliance and documenting security findings to support reporting for compliance reviews. May mentor and supervise lower level engineers.

Additional Department Summary: The Alabama Water Institute (AWI) is one of The University of Alabama’s four research institutes. AWI is leading local, national, and global efforts to advance water research, technology, and innovative solutions. AWI is dedicated to building a more resilient and water-secure world by driving groundbreaking research, educating the next generation of leaders, and delivering innovations that benefit communities and ecosystems worldwide. It provides a forum for interdisciplinary research and education and brings together university researchers, students, and staff to foster collaboration and a broad interdisciplinary focus on water issues that face our world today. AWI-affiliated researchers specialize in water security and quality, remote sensing, hydrological modeling, biological variability, watershed management and human health through synergies with existing centers and the creation of new centers under the umbrella of AWI.
This position supports the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH) and its applied research activities. CIROH directly supports the mission of NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction (OWP) to collaboratively research, develop, and deliver state-of-the-art hydrologic analyses, forecasts, data, guidance, and equitable decision-support services. CIROH also reinforces the mission of the National Weather Service (NWS) National Water Center (NWC) by promoting collaboration across the scientific community and accelerating the transition of research innovations into operational water prediction services. Together, these efforts advance NOAA’s broader vision of a water- and weather-ready nation that is resilient to floods, droughts, water quality challenges, and other water-related hazards.
Continuation of this position is contingent upon external funding.

Required Minimum Qualifications: Master's degree and two (2) years of development operations experience; OR bachelor's degree and four (4) years of development operations experience; OR associate's degree and six (6) years of IT experience to include four (4) years of development operations; OR high school diploma or GED and eight (8) years of IT experience to include four (4) years of development operations.

Skills and Knowledge: Excellent communication skills for collaborating with researchers and technical teams. Excellent interpersonal skills to collaborate effectively with academics, researchers, engineers, contractors and students. Proficiency in Python, JavaScript, React, or a similar language. Strong proficiency in AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Solid understanding of Infrastructure-as-Code (CloudFormation). Knowledge of networking principles, object storage, and GCP services such as BigQuery.

Preferred Qualifications: Master's degree in computer science or a related field and four (4) years of DevOps experience with a focus on multi-cloud architecture. Experience with Docker and Kubernetes. Experience contributing to or maintaining open-source projects. Experience with project management, containerization, CI/CD pipelines, Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), Kubernetes, and public cloud platforms (GCP, AWS), and security and observability practices. Experience with containerization (Singularity), Git, and GitHub Actions.

Background Investigation Statement: Prior to hiring, the final candidate(s) must successfully pass a pre-employment background investigation and information obtained from social media and other internet sources. A prior conviction reported as a result of the background investigation DOES NOT automatically disqualify a candidate from consideration for this position. A candidate with a prior conviction or negative behavioral red flags will receive an individualized review of the prior conviction or negative behavioral red flags before a hiring decision is made.