<p><strong>Robert Half</strong> is actively partnering with an Austin-based client to identify a <strong>DevOps Engineer</strong> <strong>(contract).</strong> In this role, you will focus on building scalable Kubernetes environments, improving CI/CD processes, strengthening cloud security, and enabling production-ready machine learning operations (MLOps). <strong>This role is hybrid in Austin, Tx. </strong></p><p><br></p><p><strong>Key Responsibilities:</strong></p><ul><li>Design, deploy, and maintain cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) frameworks and automation best practices.</li><li>Build, manage, and optimize Kubernetes environments, ensuring reliability, scalability, security, and operational efficiency.</li><li>Develop and maintain deployment pipelines supporting both application and machine learning workloads.</li><li>Collaborate with engineering and data teams to operationalize ML models and AI-driven services in production environments.</li><li>Implement and enhance CI/CD pipelines, release automation, and deployment standards across multiple environments.</li><li>Establish platform standards, reusable tooling, and engineering best practices to improve consistency and operational maturity.</li><li>Integrate security controls, automated testing, dependency validation, and policy enforcement into delivery pipelines.</li><li>Improve observability through centralized logging, monitoring, tracing, alerting, dashboards, and operational runbooks.</li><li>Partner with cross-functional teams to increase application reliability, performance, resiliency, and recovery capabilities.</li><li>Support modern software delivery practices, including automated quality controls, secure release management, and developer enablement initiatives.</li><li>Create self-service tooling, templates, automation frameworks, and documentation that improve the overall developer experience.</li><li>Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement efforts.</li><li>Drive automation initiatives that reduce manual effort and increase operational reliability.</li><li>Work closely with infrastructure, security, engineering, and data teams to support enterprise-scale cloud platforms and services.</li></ul>