AWS Solutions Architect & DevOps Engineer. Production Environment Setup for B2B SaaS Launch

We are launching a new B2B SaaS product and need an experienced AWS Solutions Architect / Senior DevOps Engineer to build our production cloud environment from the ground up. This is not a maintenance role — we need someone who can design a clean production architecture, implement it correctly the first time, and hand it off with documentation so our small internal team can operate and evolve it. ### What You Will Own * Production AWS account architecture: VPC, subnets, IAM roles, base networking, region strategy * Terraform codebase structured into reusable modules with proper state management (S3 backend + DynamoDB locking, workspaces per environment) * Amazon EKS cluster provisioning: 2-3 node groups, cluster autoscaling, ingress-nginx, cert-manager for TLS, base RBAC * GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines: unit tests → Docker image build → ECR push → EKS deploy, with a staging-to-production promotion gate * AWS Secrets Manager integration for all secrets — nothing in plaintext, nothing committed to Git * CloudWatch dashboards and alerting for the critical paths (application errors, latency, database health, EKS node health) * Backup and disaster-recovery strategy for RDS and application state * Documentation of the architecture and deployment workflow so another engineer can understand, extend, and operate the platform ### Required Experience * 5+ years hands-on AWS engineering, with at least 2 years operating production environments * Deep Terraform experience — module design, state management, workspaces, remote backends * Production Kubernetes / EKS experience, including cluster setup, ingress, and RBAC * GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline design for containerized applications * IAM and least-privilege access design * Cloud networking (VPC, security groups, private subnets, NAT strategy) * Secrets management via AWS Secrets Manager or SSM Parameter Store * Docker and container-based deployments * Linux fundamentals and Bash/Python scripting for automation ### Strongly Preferred * AWS Solutions Architect Professional or DevOps Engineer Professional certification * Prior experience building the first production environment for a startup post-launch * Experience with observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana, or CloudWatch Container Insights) * GitOps deployment models (ArgoCD, Flux) * Cost optimization experience — right-sizing, Savings Plans, Spot integration ### Engagement Initial scope is fixed-price at $200 for the production environment buildout and handoff documentation. This is intended as a first project — if it goes well, we plan to convert into an ongoing quarterly infrastructure review and platform-evolution engagement (separate contract, agreed after the initial launch stabilizes). ### When Applying Please start your application with the phrase: AWS SETUP Then answer: 1. Describe the most recent production AWS environment you built from scratch — the stack, the approximate monthly spend once stable, and one thing you would do differently in hindsight. 2. Walk us through your Terraform module structure — how do you separate environments, and how do you handle sensitive variables? 3. What is your default EKS starter cluster shape for a small production SaaS (node groups, instance types, autoscaling parameters)? 4. How do you design a GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline so a junior engineer cannot accidentally deploy broken code to production? 5. Your availability this week — we would like a 20-minute call before we start to align on scope and share our current codebase. Please include links to any public Terraform or architecture examples you can share (redacted is fine).