Associate CloudOps Engineer -- Muscatek, Inc. Remote (United States) | Contract to Hire

Associate CloudOps Engineer -- Muscatek, Inc. Remote (United States) | Contract to Hire | Entry to Mid-Level | Target Start: Early July 2026

ABOUT MUSCATEK

Muscatek, Inc. is a Linux-first, compliance-driven managed services firm based in Bass Harbor, Maine. We support clients in healthcare, financial services, food service, and manufacturing across compliance frameworks including SOC 2, HIPAA, HITRUST e1, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and TX-RAMP. We embed as an extension of our clients' engineering and compliance teams and are accountable for outcomes, not for closing tickets.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We are hiring an Associate CloudOps Engineer to join our small infrastructure team, learn our stack alongside senior engineers, and grow into independent ownership of client environments. You will pair with senior CloudOps and DevOps engineers on AWS, Linux, Docker, and CI/CD work for healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing clients -- with real production exposure from week one and mentorship along the way.

This is a growth role for someone with one to three years of hands-on infrastructure experience who wants to go deep on cloud, Linux, and compliance work in a small, embedded MSP.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Pair with senior engineers on day-to-day operations across multiple client AWS environments
• Own a growing portfolio of routine operational work: patching, log review, backup verification, monitoring alert triage, and CI/CD pipeline maintenance
• Perform Linux administration on RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Fedora
• Triage and respond to monitoring alerts from CloudWatch, Zabbix, and SigNoz; participate in a shared on-call rotation with senior backup
• Collect compliance evidence and execute control work across SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001 engagements
• Write and improve operational runbooks
• Participate directly in client conversations once ramped
• Grow toward independent ownership of one to two client environments

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• 1 to 3 years of hands-on Linux experience in any production or lab capacity
• Some cloud exposure, ideally AWS (EC2, S3, IAM basics); Azure, GCP, or strong Linux and virtualization fundamentals will be considered
• Working comfort with Docker and basic troubleshooting
• Bash scripting fundamentals and at least one scripting language at a working level
• Git basics including branching, pull requests, and reading a CI/CD pipeline file
• Strong written communication
• US-based and authorized to work as a W-2 employee with a reliable home office setup

NICE TO HAVE

• Production AWS experience: VPC, RDS, ALB/NLB, Route 53, CloudWatch
• Infrastructure-as-code exposure: Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation
• Direct exposure to a compliance audit (SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HITRUST)
• Basic Kubernetes exposure
• CI/CD experience with GitLab CI or GitHub Actions
• AWS, Linux, or networking certifications (RHCSA, AWS Cloud Practitioner/SAA, CompTIA Linux+, Network+) earned or in progress
• Active homelab

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

• Base salary: $60,000 to $75,000 depending on experience
• Anthem group health insurance
• Paid time off, paid holidays, and sick leave
• Fully remote anywhere in the continental US
• Hardware stipend for home office setup
• Certification reimbursement and dedicated learning time
• On-call differential for rotation participation
• Clear intent to grow you into greater ownership and responsibility over time

HOW TO APPLY

Submit your resume along with a brief note about a time you learned a new piece of infrastructure or technology on your own -- what you set out to build or fix, what got in your way, and what you took away from it. A homelab story works just as well as a work story. We read these, and they matter more to us than the resume.

Send your resume and note to hr@muscatek.com or apply via Indeed.
No phone calls please.

Pay: $60,000.00 - $75,000.00 per year

Work Location: Remote