Contract: Systems 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.

We're looking for a Systems Engineer who’s excited to work across both user-facing support and complex infrastructure challenges. This hands-on role goes beyond keeping systems running — you’ll be building end-to-end solutions, integrating AI into IT workflows, contributing to secure identity management, and supporting critical services like Jira and Confluence. It’s a great fit for someone who enjoys solving problems at scale, writing and maintaining automation tools, and working with a variety of cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).

This role is a long-term contract position.

Work/Project Scope:

• Build end-to-end solutions, from endpoint engineering to systems engineering, ensuring compliance, security, and seamless processes.
• Integrate artificial intelligence into IT workflows to drive efficiency and innovation.
• Drive the design and implementation of centralized identity management and controls, aligning with modern security practices.
• Diagnose problems relating to critical services such as Jira, Confluence, and others to prevent problem recurrence.
• Maintaining and enhancing existing scripts, tools, and methodologies.
• On-call resource for resolving technical emergencies.
• Perform implementation, operational support, maintenance, and optimization of cloud and on-premises infrastructures.

Must Haves (Required Skills):

• Extensive experience in Python, Go, or PowerShell.
• Expertise in AWS, with a deep understanding of Azure and GCP cloud services.
• Proficient in OAuth2, SAML, OIDC, and modern identity governance solutions (e.g., SailPoint, Saviyant).
• Experience with configuration management tools like Terraform, Ansible, Chef, or Puppet.
• Ability to design secure and compliant frameworks aligned with business needs.
• Advanced organizational, planning, and time management skills.
• Consistent track record of collaborating with large, distributed teams of engineers over documentation and code.
• A desire to learn new technologies and continually develop your professional skills.
• Comfortable working with AWS.
• Experience building / supporting high-load web applications and solving scalability issues.

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.