Contract: Senior CI/CD Engineer

Upwork ($UPWK) is the world’s work marketplace. We serve everyone from one-person startups to over 30% of the Fortune 100 with a powerful, trust-driven platform that enables companies and talent to work together in new ways that unlock their potential.  

Last year, more than $3.8 billion of work was done through Upwork by skilled professionals who are gaining more control by finding work they are passionate about and innovating their careers. 

This is an engagement through Upwork’s Hybrid Workforce Solutions (HWS) Team. Our Hybrid Workforce Solutions Team is a global group of professionals that support Upwork’s business. Our HWS team members are located all over the world.

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As a Senior CI/CD Engineer on Platform Engineering, you will improve how hundreds of engineers build, test, and ship software. You will help operate CI/CD systems at a meaningful scale, modernize pipelines (including migration work), and improve reliability and developer experience for teams across the Marketplace and our AI and Machine Learning business unit, Umami. This role includes on-call support during Pacific Time business hours (9 AM to 6 PM PT).

Responsibilities:

• Design, implement, and maintain CI/CD pipelines and shared build tooling that improve throughput, reliability, and developer experience, with clear success metrics captured in Focals.
• Deliver pipeline migrations (for example, Jenkins or Tekton to GitHub Actions) by creating automation, templates, guardrails, and documentation that reduces friction for service owners.
• Diagnose and resolve CI incidents and performance bottlenecks through hands-on troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and follow-up improvements that prevent repeat issues.
• Build and evolve Kubernetes-based automation workflows (for example, Argo Workflows) to reduce manual steps and standardize common delivery patterns.
• Partner with internal stakeholders to understand requirements, set expectations, and communicate progress clearly, especially during high-impact changes.
• Uphold security and compliance best practices across the delivery stack, including access controls, secrets handling, and infrastructure as code practices using Terraform.

Must Haves (Required Skills):

• Strong production experience building and operating CI/CD systems, including hands-on work with GitHub Actions and at least one of Jenkins or Tekton.
• Solid AWS and Kubernetes experience, including operating workloads on EKS and working with services such as IAM, ECR, S3, and RDS.
• Proficiency with Terraform and a practical approach to safe, repeatable infrastructure changes.
• Ability to write and maintain automation code in Python, plus one of Java or JavaScript/TypeScript, with a focus on reliability and maintainability.
• Adaptive AI proficiency: you integrate AI tools into engineering workflows to speed up troubleshooting, automation, and documentation, and you validate outputs for accuracy, security, and operational risk.

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Upwork is proudly committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workforce. We never discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical condition), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics.

Additionally, to the extent permitted under applicable law, a criminal background check may be required as a condition of engagement.

We use BrightHire, an AI-enabled tool, to record interviews and summarize interview transcripts. The tool allows the interviewer to focus on the discussion and does not score or evaluate talent or make recommendations. The interview transcripts are reviewed, and decisions are only made by humans. Any individual who prefers not to have their interview recorded through BrightHire can opt out when the interview is scheduled.