Lead DevOps Engineer

At the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, employees come first - that’s why we offer a highly competitive compensation and bonus package, and access to a comprehensive benefits program designed to meet the needs of our employees. 

• Collaborative, in-office operating model

• Retirement program (401k and Pension) 

• Medical, dental and vision insurance 

• Lifestyle Spending Account 

• Competitive PTO plan 

• 11 paid holidays per year

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Our mission at FHLBank Chicago: To partner with our members in Illinois and Wisconsin to provide them competitively priced funding, a reasonable return on their investment, and support for their community investment activities.

Simply said, we're a bank for banks and other financial institutions, focused on being a strategic partner for our members and working together to reinvest in our communities, from urban centers to rural areas. Created by Congress in 1932, FHLBank Chicago is one of 11 Federal Home Loan Banks, government sponsored in support of mortgage lending and community investment.

What it’s like to work here

At FHLBank Chicago, we bring people together. We are committed to a high performing, engaged workforce, and to supporting the communities we serve across Illinois and Wisconsin. Our Buddy Program pairs new hires with tenured employees to guide their onboarding. Our professional development and training opportunities through upskilling, mentorship programs, and tuition reimbursement allow employees to grow their career with us. Our collaborative, in-office operating model brings teams together to foster innovation, connection, and shared success. To support balance and flexibility, employees are provided an allocation of remote days to use as needed throughout the year.

What You’ll do

The Lead DevOps Engineer will partner with IT Delivery Teams to ensure code, services and products seamlessly move from development through rollout and into production. Work requires scripting and coding with an eye on automation and continuous integration so that deployments can be broken down and distributed across multiple development and test teams for the implementation of web-based application development projects. 

This is a hands-on role that requires analytical thinking, technical aptitude and an ability to work closely with members of the development, infrastructure security, and solution architecture teams (i.e., engineers and testers). Resources to do the job require reliance on technical knowledge of Azure DevOps implementation and administration, .NET, structured programming concepts, containerization, micro services, architecture and process enhancement to support the bank’s development and testing efforts.  General direction is received from the Sr. Manager, Modern Engineering.

How you’ll make an impact:

• Establish a standardized, secure DevSecOps platform at enterprise scale

  • The Lead DevOps Engineer will own and evolve the Azure DevOps to GitHub Migration, end‑to‑end CI/CD , defining reusable pipeline templates, infrastructure‑as‑code standards, and Kubernetes‑based reference architectures that are secure, scalable, and compliant with regulatory requirements while improving developer experience.

• Embed security, compliance, and AI‑enabled governance into the SDLC by design

  • The Lead DevOps Engineer will supervise implementation of consistent quality and security gates (SAST, SCA, DAST, IaC, and container scanning) and enable AI‑assisted SDLC practices to detect risk earlier, reduce audit friction, and ensure repeatable, auditable delivery workflows without slowing teams down.

• Strengthening Security and Compliance:

  • By implementing security best practices and ensuring compliance with performance, security, availability, and recoverability standards, the Lead DevOps Engineer will play a crucial role in safeguarding the bank's IT infrastructure and maintaining the integrity of its operations

• Drive cultural change and capability uplift across engineering teams

  • The Lead DevOps Engineer will mentor engineers, deliver hands‑on training, and lead a Modern Engineering Center of Excellence to increase DevSecOps adoption, strengthen engineering practices, and translate strategic platform vision into consistent execution across teams.

What you can expect:

• Set up CI/CD pipelines to support automated deployment of resources to Cloud environments, all at medium to high level of complexity

• This is a hands-on role that develops and supports build and release automation pipelines. You will be part of the team that will deploy a highly available full software stack in public/ private clouds

• Design, implement, and manage CI/CD pipelines. Automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration.

• Collaborate with development teams to ensure seamless integration and deployment.

• Implement security best practices and ensure compliance.

• Mentor and guide junior DevOps engineers.

• Proactively identifies system and process risks and recommend/implement process improvements

• Remediate gaps and support the automation requirements of continuous integration and continuous deployment

• Identify and develop metrics and dashboards to monitor adoption and maturity of DevOps

• Expertise in Docker/Containerization and Kubernetes

• Ability to contribute to architecture discussions around technology controls and their implementation in a DevOps/Cloud environment

• Work collaboratively with architecture, security and other engineers to estimate, design, code, deploy and support working software / technology components

• Foster the adoption of DevSecOps culture and capabilities across Agile product delivery teams

• Work in an Agile/Scrum environment; planning, estimating, and completing tasks on

• Liaison with Agile Delivery Process teams to support necessary configurations/setup in Azure DevOps (ADO) for Agile ceremonies

• Participate in various technology Center of Excellence and evenagelise DevSecOps methodologies.

• Work with development and support teams to design improved deployment, provisioning and integration workflows, ensure environments stability and identify areas and plans for improvement

• Contribute to new technology, vendor package and tool road mapping, evaluation and introduction

• Ensure compliance with Performance, Security, Availability, Recoverability standards and policies and provide Monitoring recommendations for tasks of low to medium level of complexity

What you'll bring:

• 7+ years of demonstrable software engineering and DevOps experience

• 7+ years working in SCRUM/Agile software development environment

• Experience deploying and administering Continuous integration tools such as Azure DevOps, Jenkins, TeamCity, Octopus or Bamboo

• Expertise with Infrastructure cloud tools such as Terraform, Docker, Podman, Helm etc.

• Expertise with integrating Static Application Security Testing (SAST) using Checkmarx and other tools

• Expertise with Code quality scans using Sonarqube and others

• Expertise with automated testing solutions for unit testing, integration and system testing

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent experience. Computer Science or related field preferred.

• Strong cloud engineering experience primarily with Azure and AWS.

• Expertise in working with Terraform, Ansible, and/or Chef for infrastructure automation and configuration

• Expertise with Docker and Kubernetes on platforms such as AWS ECS and AWS EKS

• Expertise with programming languages such as Python, C++ is a must

• Expertise with Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools such as Datadog and others

• Expertise with SQL databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, NoSQL databases like AWS Dynamo DB and MongoDB, graph DB such as Neo4J, AWS Neptune.

• Expertise with project management and workflow tools and concepts such as Jira, Agile, Scrum/Kanban, etc.

• Proficiency in cross-platform scripting language and build tools (Python, ANT, Artifactory, Groovy, MS Build, NuGet)

• Proficiency in OOP software development using C# or similar languages

• Ability to define scalable and secure CI/CD pipelines

• Understanding of deployment strategies using Docker for containerization

• Experience with pair programming using GitHub Copilot

• Strong communication/presentation skills and ability to explain protocol, processes, and cloud architecture with team and management.