Cloud Engineer III

About the role  

As a Cloud Engineer III on Cloud Foundations, you’ll help build and run the secure, reliable, and scalable cloud platform capabilities that power Northwestern Mutual’s technology ecosystem. This team is moving toward a services- and automation-first model, where core cloud capabilities are delivered through standardized patterns, APIs, pipelines, and self-service workflows rather than one-off manual provisioning. You’ll work across AWS and Azure to improve platform consistency, strengthen governance and observability, and reduce friction for application teams adopting cloud services.

This role is a strong fit for an engineer who enjoys solving real platform problems, improving how things operate at scale, and partnering across engineering, security, and network teams to turn solid architecture into usable, supportable services. We value technical curiosity, practical automation, clean engineering habits, and a mindset that balances speed with stability, security, and long-term maintainability.

What you’ll do: 

• Demonstrate technical leadership within the team
• Proficiency in DevOps and Agile principles
• Apply engineering standard methodologies to analyze and develop software solutions
• Leverages established coding standards, best practices, and automation capabilities to develop solutions to support our users
• Identify technical problems and develop software solutions and automation capabilities
• Have the technical skill to adequately review the software code developed in the project
• Strive for continuous improvement on all aspects within the team and build continuous integration and continuous development pipeline (CI/CD)

What you’ll bring: 

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience
• AWS or Docker or Kubernetes Certification Preferred
• 2-4 years of working experience
• 3+ years of professional IT experience
• Experience with AWS Cloud Services (AWS Certified Preferred), and containerized applications and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes – CKA Preferred)
• 3+ years' experience with monitoring and performance management/tuning of systems
• 3+ years' experience with networking and Linux based platforms
• 3+ years' experience with modern programming and scripting languages (Python, JavaScript, etc.)
• Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code frameworks (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Experience working with DevOps, CICD, GitOps, Agile methodologies
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation and how to apply it with services such as Gitlab CI, Jenkins, CodePipeline, or Circle CI
• Understanding of certificates, firewalls, vulnerability management, authentication, and authorization
• Understanding of Unit Testing
• Experience with Linux and Windows. Comfortable with CLI
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Problem solver who enjoys learning on the job and thinking outside of the box

Skills you have

• CI/CD Processes: Involves expertise in implementing and maintaining automated testing processes for software delivery pipelines. Requires knowledge of version control systems. Builds tools and continuous integration servers to enable continuous testing, integration, and delivery of software products. Collaborates with developers to ensure that automated tests are executed at each stage of the pipeline, identifies and reports issues, and provides feedback to improve the overall quality of the applications.
• Cloud & IT Infrastructure: Embraces, prioritizes, and applies DevOps principles and mindset to cybersecurity services and capabilities; leverages understanding of enterprise IT environment from operating system to networks and domain services and orchestrates applications and infrastructure through a pipeline approach.
• Cloud Technology: Applies knowledge of cloud service platforms and delivery models to support, develop, adopt, secure, implement and evaluate end-to-end cloud solutions delivery and data storage instead of through traditional physical servers in a back office.
• Infrastructure Automation: Articulates and applies systems architecture and automation technologies to support and implement automation optimization and initiatives.
• Site Reliability Engineering: Uses software tools to automate IT infrastructure tasks such as system management and application monitoring. Ensures software applications remain reliable amidst updates from development teams. Improves reliability of scalable software systems.
• Software Engineering: Designs, develops, tests, documents and maintains software applications for the organization to use to process complex technical information. Demonstrates the ability to convert design specifications into functional software solutions that meet customer needs. Includes planning, designing, programming, debugging, testing, documenting and maintaining applications and services, using established coding standards and methodologies. Ensures that the code delivered is reusable and modular. Uses software development processes in which the smallest testable parts of an application (units) are individually and independently scrutinized for proper operation.

#LI-Hybrid

Compensation Range:

Pay Range - Start:

$98,320.00

Pay Range - End:

$147,480.00

Geographic Specific Pay Structure:

Structure 110:

$108,160.00 USD - $162,240.00 USD

Structure 115:

$113,040.00 USD - $169,560.00 USD

We believe in fairness and transparency. It’s why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you’re living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.

Grow your career with a best-in-class company that puts our clients' interests at the center of all we do. Get started now!

Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes talented individuals of all backgrounds. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.