DevOps Engineer

Overview

NPR's rigorous reporting and unsurpassed storytelling connect with millions of Americans everyday—on the air, online, and in person. NPR strives to create a more informed public—one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas, and cultures. With a nationwide network of award-winning journalists and 17 international bureaus, NPR and its Member Stations are never far from where a story is unfolding. Listeners consider public radio an enriching and enlightening companion; they trust NPR as a daily source of unbiased independent news, and inspiring insights on life and the arts.

Intro to Position

NPR is seeking a DevOps Engineer to join our cross-discipline technical product team. In this role, you will build and maintain the products, services, and tools that power the NPR Network, serving millions of public media consumers daily.

Responsibilities

• Infrastructure Automation: Build, maintain, and optimize robust CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure deployment workflows using automated orchestration tools and scripting languages.
• System Administration: Administer, monitor, and troubleshoot Linux/Unix-based compute instances across on-premises and multi-cloud environments.
• Cloud & Platform Engineering: Support, deploy, and scale workloads within cloud environments, ensuring high availability and fault tolerance.
• Scalability & Performance: Investigate, analyze, and optimize application performance and infrastructure scaling limits to support peak traffic events.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Standardize environments and maintain reproducible state models by developing clean, modular Infrastructure as Code.
• Database & Storage Management: Monitor, configure, and troubleshoot relational databases and storage architectures to ensure optimal data flow and integrity.
• Content Delivery & Edge Routing: Configure and manage Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to optimize media delivery and caching strategies.
• Documentation & Knowledge Sharing: Write and maintain detailed, clear system documentation and architectural diagrams to support team alignment and operational resilience.
• On-Call & System Reliability: Participate in a shared engineering on-call rotation to quickly diagnose, mitigate, and resolve production system incidents.

Minimum Qualifications

• 2 to 3 years of professional experience in a DevOps(AWS), Systems Engineering, or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) role.
• A Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field may be substituted for 1–2 years of experience.
• Strong hands-on proficiency in Linux/Unix system administration.
• Hands-on experience writing automation scripts using languages like Python, Bash, or similar administrative scripting tools.
• Practical experience utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles and cloud orchestration technologies.
• Experience with virtualization technologies and containerization.
• Basic understanding of relational database administration, storage technologies, and CDN concepts.
• Active willingness and eligibility to participate in a scheduled on-call support rotation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience integrating, configuring, and tuning infrastructure monitoring and application performance management (APM) tools.
• Experience participating in large-scale application migration projects from on-premises environments to cloud platforms.

Required Skills/Competencies

• Automation-First Mindset: The ability to identify repetitive manual operational tasks and replace them with reliable, automated code-driven workflows.
• Systems Troubleshooting: Diagnostic capabilities to isolate and resolve performance bottlenecks across networking, databases, and server configurations.
• Architectural Documentation: Ability to clearly document architecture, workflows, and infrastructure changes (including system diagrams).
• Collaborative Communication: Strong interpersonal skills to work as an integrated member of a cross-functional technical product team.

Education Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical work experience.

Work Location & Requirements

DMU or NPR Hybrid Permitted: This is a hybrid permitted role. Some aspects of this role require duties better performed at an NPR facility. The employee will be required to be in the office at the Washington, D.C. location at least 10 days a year. The employee must also reside in an NPR-supported location based on the number of on-site days they choose.

Job Type

This is a full-time, exempt position.

Compensation

Salary Range: The U.S.-based anticipated salary range for this opportunity is $107,300.24 - $119,597.71 plus benefits. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salaries NPR expects to provide for new hires for the position across all US locations.

NPR Benefits

NPR provides comprehensive benefits for employees and dependents. Regular, full-time employees scheduled to work 30 hours or more per week are eligible to enroll in NPR’s benefits options. Benefits include access to health and wellness, paid time off, and financial well-being. Plan options include medical, dental, vision, life/ accidental death and dismemberment, long-term disability, short-term disability, and voluntary retirement savings to all eligible NPR employees.