Google Cloud DevOps Engineer (Temporary Contract)

About You You're looking for a challenge where you can take ownership of building and maintaining Google Cloud infrastructure for a large-scale operational platform. You will work closely with a platform lead to stand up Kubernetes workloads (GKE clusters and/or Helm-based deployments, final architecture still being finalized with the client) , CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-native monitoring, with the heaviest infrastructure work taking place during the first two months as the platform comes online, followed by pipeline maintenance and deployment support through acceptance. This is a platform-focused DevOps role where strong Terraform, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and Git expertise are essential. You will work within defined Dev/QA access boundaries and contribute to a structured delivery process. Note: This role operates under a 5-month contractor model , with at least 4 hours of daily overlap with U.S. Eastern business hours required. You Bring to Applaudo the Following Competencies: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field is desired, or equivalent professional experience. 5+ years of professional experience with Terraform on Google Cloud, including building and maintaining infrastructure from an existing baseline and building new modules from scratch where none exist (e.g., GKE) Strong hands-on experience with Kubernetes, including both GKE cluster setup/management and Helm chart packaging and deployment. Working knowledge of Cloud Run for containerized service deployment. Experience deploying and maintaining Cloud Composer (Airflow-based) for orchestration, including environment configuration. Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and environment promotion workflows, using Cloud Build and Artifact Registry. Experience implementing and maintaining Google Cloud-native monitoring, alerting, and logging using Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging. Strong Git fundamentals, including branching strategies, pull requests,