AWS Subject Matter Expert

About Gruntwork

Gruntwork is on a mission to transform the way DevOps is done. Let’s face it: designing, launching, and managing infrastructure is still a terrible experience for most organizations, but it doesn’t have to be that way!

We are globally recognized both for our open source tools used by thousands of companies from startups to Fortune 500s, and our thought leadership on how DevOps should be done.

About this role

The SME Contractor is primarily focused on writing/maintaining our OpenTofu IaC code library within the Kubernetes and Networking “subject matter expertise.” The role is intended to be a very flexible part time role, tickets are assigned and generally have a 1-3 day SLA, so there’s flexibility as to when work gets done.

• You’re very comfortable with AWS, and feel you are an expert on a certain subset of AWS’s services, such as networking, databases, security etc.
• You’re familiar with testing OpenTofu code with tools like Terratest or the built in tofu test capability.
• You’re very organized, comfortable working independently.
• You’re comfortable acting as a tech lead, running projects, tracking work in a tool like Jira or Linear and communicating with other team members to ensure broader objectives are met.

This is a mid-level contractor position, paid based on an hourly rate. We expect an average of ~20 hours of work per week, with the possibility of up to 30 hours depending on your availability and skill level. One of the great perks of contracting is flex time — you’ll have control over when you work.

That said, we do expect to support some customers in the EU time zone, so there may occasionally be a need to work on weekends (Saturday/Sunday) depending on scheduling and coverage needs.

What you’ll work on

• The Infrastructure as Code library - The Gruntwork Library contains over 300K lines of reusable, battle-tested, production-ready infrastructure code for AWS.

• World Class Customer Support

  • Part of your role will include participating in business-hours only support within your specific subject matter expertise area to:

    • Help resolve customer tickets and knowledge base posts

    • Keep GitHub issues and external PRs up to date
    • Ensure modules are kept up to date with 3rd party tool releases
    • Help create and maintain a clean GitHub Project backlog
    • Teach Gruntwork and DevOps best-practices
    • Automate and document solutions so that problems are mitigated for future users

• Open Source

  • Contribute to our open source projects, including Terragrunt, Terratest, cloud-nuke, bash-commons, boilerplate and more

Qualifications for Success

• Deep expertise in writing Terraform/OpenTofu modules. Familiarity with Terragrunt is a plus.
• Experience testing infrastructure as code.
• You have a strong background in software engineering, with 5+ years of experience.
• You have deep expertise with Kubernetes, and EKS in particular
• You have extensive experience writing Infrastructure as Code using Terraform/OpenTofu.
• You have strong communication skills in English and are comfortable engaging with external customers.
• You're interested in working a flexible number of hours that averages ~15 hours/week.
• You can respond to support and maintenance requests within a 1-2 business day SLA.
• You hate doing the same thing twice and would rather spend the time to automate a problem away than do the same work again.
• Ability to write Golang and Bash is a nice to have!

About you

We’re looking for a Grunt who:

• Loves making customers happy. You're on a mission to making customers happy and successful. You're eager to leverage your talents to meet their needs.
• Loves to learn. You're excited abut learning new things, and looking to be at the forefront of Sales and DevOps best practices.
• Loves a challenge. You like to perform at your best by aiming high while also taking care of yourself and those around you.
• Cares about your fellow humans. You look to make personal connections with the people you work with, and you want to work for a company whose mission and people you believe in.
• Has extensive AWS foundations experience. You have worked for years with AWS, have deep familiarity with AWS networking (VPC), foundational best practices (Organizations, SCPs, Landing Zone), and security best practices.
• Has extensive Terraform experience. You have directly authored plenty of Terraform modules, you've operated Terraform in prod and can speak from your years of experience, and you're excited to use OpenTofu.
• Has a passion for DevOps best practices. You're passionate about the best way to run modern cloud infrastructure in a secure, convenient, and enjoyable way.

Our interview process

After you apply for this role, here's the process we'll go through to evaluate a mutual fit:

1. Phone screen. We'll do a quick phone screen to assess a general fit.
2. Tech interview. We'll talk shop with you to see if we're on the same page about the technical requirements for the role.
3. Paid Contracting Trial period: We'll pay you for the opportunity to work together for 3-5 days.
4. Offer! We're very pleased to be working together!