Hilltop Partner Network (HPN) is seeking an experienced, highly autonomous Senior DevOps Consultant to manage, harden, and optimize the cloud infrastructure powering our proprietary, AI-first consulting management platform, Censtra. The incoming consultant must operate as a hands-on individual contributor and primary doer, not as an AI supervisor, engagement manager, or lead of a bench of junior or offshore resources.

The consultant will serve as a critical technical co-pilot to the CTO by directly executing Azure environment management, Terraform codebase maintenance, and deployment pipeline work.

Role Overview and Commercial Terms

- Position Title: Senior DevOps Consultant (SaaS & Cloud Infrastructure)
- Engagement Model: Part-Time Independent Consultant Agreement
- Time Commitment: Capped at 8 hours per week (1 business day equivalent) with absolute 'pens down' enforcement on routine tasks
- Hourly Compensation: $100.00 – $120.00 CAD per hour (commensurate with senior-tier technical expertise)
- Location: 100% Remote (Winnipeg, MB or Western Canada region preferred)
- Reporting Structure: Reports directly to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Key Areas of Accountability The Senior DevOps Consultant will maintain absolute hands-on ownership of the following domains:

- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Management: Maintain Azure staging and production in Terraform. Changes go through code review, not the portal.
- CI/CD Pipeline & Orchestration Ownership: Manage GitHub Actions and Azure deployment workflows for Censtra’s modular applications, with a clear rollback path.
- Network Security & Environment Hardening: Keep staging and production networks separate and maintain secure private access for the team.
- Secrets Management & Application Compliance: Own Azure Key Vault and managed identities, so credentials are not stored in source control.
- Security posture automation: Help automate monitoring and remediation, so Azure Secure Score stays above 85%. Routine patching stays with the internal team; you build the guardrails.
- Right-Sizing:



Identify unused cloud spend and keep database and AI usage within budget.

Technical Requirements & Qualifications The ideal candidate must demonstrate deep technical mastery and the ability to operate independently:

- Minimum 8-10 years of skilled software development and system administration experience, with a heavy emphasis on cloud architecture and automation.
- Demonstrated mastery of Microsoft Azure PaaS environments, specifically Azure Container Apps, Azure Functions (consumption & premium tiers), Azure Key Vault, Private Endpoints, virtual networks, and Log Analytics/Application Insights.
- Advanced proficiency in Terraform, including designing modular, reusable modules, managing secure remote state backends, and configuring OIDC federated identity providers.
- Expert knowledge of GitHub Actions CI/CD orchestration, including branch protection rules, mandatory quality checks, automated dependency updates (Dependabot), and deployment security rules.
- Solid foundation in DevSecOps principles, including static code analysis (Semgrep, ESLint), secrets scanning, and automated container image scanning.
- Deep understanding of database and storage architectures, including PostgreSQL management (Prisma ORM configurations), Azure Storage Queues, and Dockerized graph databases (Neo4j).
- Familiarity with AI/ML cloud hosting infrastructure (Azure OpenAI Service, TPM/RPM quota budgeting, private network integration for AI services) is highly desirable.
- Strong, structured communication skills - able to coordinate release planning with developers and maintain lean, up-to-date engineering wiki documentation.
- Proven ability to operate as an independent contractor, managing deliverables strictly within a tight 8-hour weekly time budget.
- Hands-on individual contributor model is required.

How to Apply Interested candidates should submit their resume to [email protected] with the email subject line “Senior DevOps Consultant.” Candidates should also include a brief note outlining their relevant Azure, Terraform, CI/CD, and DevSecOps automation experience.

📌 Senior DevOps Consultant (part-time contract) (Canada)
🏢 Hilltop Partner Network
📍 Canada