Cloud / DevOps Engineer (Infra & IaC)

Remote • Contract • Worldwide • $75-$110/hr

Mercor is hiring for this role as an independent contractor engagement. Work is remote and project based.

Join a leading AI lab's cutting-edge GenAI team to be at the core of the AI revolution, where your expertise fuels the development of the most advanced Large Language Models.

Join a leading AI lab's cutting-edge GenAI team and help build foundational AI models from the ground up. We're seeking talented Cloud and DevOps Engineers with deep, hands-on expertise in Kubernetes operations, AWS service integration, and Infrastructure-as-Code to bring hands-on technical excellence and elevate the quality of our AI training and inference infrastructure data. This is a full-time commitment of 40 hours per week.

This is a W-2 employment position with Cincinnatus LLC, with the opportunity to be placed at a leading AI Lab as part of their extended workforce.

• Guide research and engineering teams to close knowledge gaps and improve AI model performance in cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes operations, and Infrastructure-as-Code topics.
• Design challenging, domain-relevant tasks, and write accurate and well-structured solutions to cluster diagnosis, AWS service integration, and infrastructure automation problems.
• Evaluate infrastructure engineering tasks and solutions and provide clear, written technical feedback.
• Develop guidelines and detailed rubrics/evaluation frameworks to assess cluster failure diagnosis, IaC design quality, and CI/CD pipeline reasoning across tasks.
• Collaborate with other subject matter experts to ensure consistency and accuracy in training data.

• 4+ years of dedicated professional experience in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, site reliability, or platform engineering at a recognized, top-tier organization.
• Hands-on production experience operating Kubernetes, including diagnosing and repairing cluster failures , not solely authoring manifests or using a managed control plane.
• Production experience with Infrastructure-as-Code, specifically Terraform and/or AWS CDK.
• Direct experience integrating AWS services in production, including Lambda, API Gateway, and DynamoDB.
• Experience building and owning CI/CD pipelines.
• Demonstrable career progression.
• Ability to engage reliably for at least 40 hours/week during weekdays.
• Strong written communication skills and the ability to explain complex technical decisions clearly.

About Cincinnatus LLC: Cincinnatus LLC is an enterprise staffing company that partners with leading technology companies to source and employ highly skilled professionals for contingent and contract-based opportunities. Cincinnatus serves as the employer of record for these engagements, providing W-2 employment, payroll, benefits, and compliance, while placing employees directly within client teams to work on high-impact initiatives.

Equal Employment Opportunity: Cincinnatus is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, genetic information, political views or activity, or any other legally protected characteristic.