Senior AWS Cloud Engineer- VDI Platform

About the Role 

APEX Fintech's AWS WorkSpaces platform is a production-grade, multi-region AWS serverless system that automates the full lifecycle of Amazon WorkSpaces virtual desktops for a multi-tenant VDI program spanning hundreds of active desktops. We're hiring a Senior AWS Cloud Engineer who will take full ownership of the platform's architecture — designing, building, and automating the systems that keep it running — while serving as the go-to expert for day-to-day production incidents. You'll bring a security- and compliance-first mindset to every decision, ensuring the platform holds up to the standards our regulated fintech environment demands. 

Duties/Responsibilities 

• Own the architecture, code quality, and evolution of the platform — driving decisions on new capabilities, DR testing, scaling, and Terraform IaC. 

• Serve as the primary escalation point for engineering questions related to the system. 

• Diagnose and resolve production incidents quickly, tracing failures end-to-end across Lambda, SQS, DynamoDB, SNS, and CloudWatch Logs. 

• Support day-to-day VDI operations: image builds, bundle management, directory configuration, client connectivity, and user-facing troubleshooting. 

• Bridge the gap between infrastructure automation and end-user desktop experience. 

• Mentor junior engineers on AWS serverless architecture, operational best practices, and production troubleshooting. 

• Own the deployment and integration of Datadog monitoring for the AWS VDI stack, including metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, SLOs, and alerting. 

Education and Experience 

• At least 5 years of hands-on AWS experience, including 3+ years with serverless or event-driven architecture in production. 

• 2+ years of experience with Amazon WorkSpaces in a production environment. 

• Multi-region AWS deployment experience; CCR or active-active DR experience is a strong plus. 

• Must have written, deployed, and debugged Python Lambda functions in production. 

• 2+ years of work experience with Terraform to manage real production AWS infrastructure, including remote state. 

• Must demonstrate working experience with WorkSpaces lifecycle management, including create, update, delete, and rebuild operations. 

• Expertise with Python 3.14 Lambda development — handlers, environment variables, error handling. 

• Experience with Lambda concurrency, timeouts, retries, and DLQ behavior. 

• Ability to create, update, and troubleshoot AWS Step Functions, including STANDARD workflows, states, Wait, Choice, and Task. 

• API Gateway — EDGE endpoints, SQS service integration, API key authentication. 

• Experience with DynamoDB single-table design, including partition keys, sort keys, GSIs, and related access patterns. 

• Must demonstrate expertise with SNS, including topic subscriptions, message filtering, and error notification patterns. 

• Experience working with Terraform in multi-region deployments and provider configuration. 

• Configuration management using Ansible, including playbooks, roles, inventory management, idempotent task design, and Ansible Vault. 

• Hands-on experience with observability and resilience tooling (CloudWatch Logs Insights/metrics/alarms, Route53 health checks/failover routing) as well as Datadog for serverless observability. 

• AWS KMS Multi-Region Keys, including replication, key policy, and encryption context. 

• AWS IAM administration — users, groups, roles, permission boundaries, and cross-account role assumption. 

Ways to Stand Out 

• VPC design for WorkSpaces (subnets, route tables, NAT Gateway, Transit Gateway, security groups) 

• Custom domain management (Route53, ACM certificates, API Gateway custom domains) 

• Cost optimization for WorkSpaces. 

• Infrastructure security scanning (Checkov, tfsec) 

• Knowledge of security frameworks and controls, including CIS benchmarks, NIST, device compliance, and conditional access. 

• Experience supporting regulated environments, such as FINRA, SEC, FedRAMP, NIST, or SOC environments. 

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical decisions to both engineering peers and non-technical stakeholders. 

Other Preferred Qualifications 

• AWS Solutions Architect – Professional 

• AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional 

• AWS SysOps Administrator – Associate 

• Cross-Region Replication (CCR) design patterns / multi-region DR architecture 

• Experience with ITIL practices, service management tooling, and building actionable SLOs and SLIs. 

• Familiarity with compliance and regulatory requirements in financial services. 

• Experience with DLP (Data Loss Prevention) and endpoint security in regulated environments. 
   

Work Environment 

• This job operates in a hybrid office environment three days per week.