DevOps Engineer II

At Knife River, we take care of our team because we know it’s our people who make us successful. We are one of the 10 largest construction materials producers/contractors in the country, and we are a PEOPLE-first company. Our team members are the key to our success, and we are committed to giving them the tools, training, and time to do their jobs productively and safely each day. Our goal is to build strong teams that, in turn, build strong communities. We are also a publicly traded company on the NYSE with the ticker symbol KNF and part of the S&P MidCap 400 index.

About the role

You are responsible for placing safety as the #1 priority in your day-to-day work routine for yourself and others. Under the direction of the Senior Software Developer/Architect, you build, automate, and maintain the infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment processes that support internal applications across the company. You interface with development teams and users to meet business operational needs through the use of technology. You study existing build, release, and infrastructure processes to design, develop, and implement the automation, tooling, and documentation necessary to improve the reliability, security, and speed of the company’s software delivery in accordance with department standards. You also support the availability, performance, and monitoring of applications and environments throughout the organization.

Location: Bismarck, ND or in a geographic location near a Knife River location.

Responsibilities

• Work independently with development teams and consultants on maintenance and enhancement of build, release, and infrastructure systems and/or as part of a team on major automation projects.
• Review, analyze, evaluate, and document requested modifications to existing and new build, release, and infrastructure processes.
• Assist senior staff members or project leads in the study of feasibility and cost effectiveness of proposed enhancements.
• Provide production support to address infrastructure, pipeline, and deployment issues encountered during processing. Such support may require on-call duties extending beyond normal business hours. On-call duties are shared with other team members on a rotating basis as determined by the manager.
• Participate in automation and release engineering activities as well as guide activities of other staff members; develop deployment plans, test environments, and documentation.
• Perform required testing to ensure systems and pipelines function in accordance with the business requirements established by the user.
• Develop automation and environment specifications and provide direction through all phases of the software delivery life cycle for a project team consisting of software developers, systems analysts, users, and consultants.
• Responsible for identification, development, implementation, maintenance, and integration of data security measures.
• Keep abreast of emerging technologies related to assigned areas of responsibility and seek ways to improve deployment and delivery efficiencies.
• Perform other tasks and special projects as assigned.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems or a related field or equivalent experience.
• Four years of Information Technology experience with a proven record of increasing responsibility in systems administration, infrastructure automation, or software deployment.
• Two years of experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code), with proficiency in current AI code generation (“vibe coding”) workflows and the ability to review, refine, and validate AI-generated automation code and infrastructure-as-code.
• Must take all measures necessary to protect networks, devices, programs, and data from cyber-attack, damage, or unauthorized access.
• May be required to maintain a valid driver’s license.
• May be required to participate in an on-call rotation.
• If the need for unescorted access to security-sensitive business locations and/or systems (i.e., Electric EMS system) arises, must submit to periodic background checks.

Skills

Key Skills and Competencies

• Excellent written, interpersonal, and verbal communication skills.
• Broad knowledge of DevOps principles, practices, and procedures, including continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with internal and external customers.
• Able to manage multiple priorities.
• Experience in infrastructure automation and software delivery in a business environment.
• Understanding of and ability to maintain confidentiality of all company information.

CI/CD and Automation Key Skills

• Highly proficient building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines with tools such as Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins.
• Proficient with infrastructure-as-code and configuration management tools such as Terraform, Bicep, or Ansible.
• Proficient scripting in PowerShell, Bash, or Python.
• Proficient with source control and artifact management tools such as Git, Azure Repos, JFrog Artifactory, or Sonatype Nexus.
• Proficient integrating application security testing into CI/CD pipelines, including SAST tools (e.g., SonarQube, Checkmarx, Veracode) and DAST tools (e.g., OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite).

Cloud and Infrastructure Key Skills

• Highly proficient in one or more of the following: Azure, AWS, Windows Server, Linux, Active Directory/Entra ID, networking fundamentals (DNS, load balancing, firewalls).
• Proficient supporting Oracle or SQL databases, including backups and patching.
• Proficient with containerization and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes).

Monitoring and Reliability Key Skills

• Proficient implementing monitoring, logging, and alerting solutions (e.g., Azure Monitor, Grafana, Splunk).
• Proficient in incident response, root-cause analysis, and problem management.
• Proficient in backup, disaster recovery, and high-availability practices.
• Proficient in transforming business requirements into reliable, automated delivery processes.
• Knowledge of security patching, vulnerability management, and secrets management tools (e.g., Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Tenable Nessus, HashiCorp Vault, Azure Key Vault).