Cloud Engineer at Robert Half
Washington, DC
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Jul 2, 2026
Washington, DC
Jul 21, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior engineering role focused on building and running enterprise-scale observability platforms across hybrid cloud and containerized environments. Day-to-day work spans metrics, logging, distributed tracing, APM, and synthetic monitoring — primarily using Datadog and related tooling — alongside performance investigation, capacity planning, and cloud monitoring for Azure and AWS workloads including Kubernetes and OpenShift. Suits a seasoned engineer with 8+ years in infrastructure or cloud operations and deep hands-on observability experience.
Senior level · 8+ years · Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV · Bachelor's required · Contract
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 400 people in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 120–730
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
What the occupation pays Median $158,337 (middle half $126,441–$180,105).
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (7)
The role is posted by Robert Half, a staffing firm, and the posting references contract/temporary benefits — this is most likely a contract placement, though the posting does not explicitly state contract vs. permanent for this specific role.
The clearance requirement is 'ability to obtain and maintain Public Trust' — this is not a formal US security clearance (Confidential/Secret/TS), so the clearance requirement is set to None. Hiring managers should note the Public Trust suitability requirement nonetheless.
SOC classification is a genuine judgment call: the role involves both building observability infrastructure-as-code and operating/monitoring platforms. It was classified as Software Developers (15-1252) because the JD emphasizes engineering, building reusable IaC modules, instrumentation, and platform development — not purely operating existing systems. Network and Computer Systems Administrators (15-1244) is the runner-up.
Datadog is listed as the primary named platform in the required section alongside Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability, and Grafana/Prometheus as acceptable alternatives for the observability platform requirement. Grafana and Prometheus are also listed together as a single platform option in the JD.
Kubernetes, OpenShift, Terraform, ARM Bicep, ServiceNow, and CI/CD integration all appear under Preferred Qualifications and are marked accordingly.
The degree requirement is a hard-stated Bachelor's with no 'or equivalent experience' language, so it is treated as a firm gate.
Posting is for a contract engagement — the market benchmarks below price full-time roles, so read the comp comparison with that in mind.
Read the full posting
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