Technical Instructor, Cloud & DevOps Support (Temporary)

Reports to: Vice President, Talent Operations Status/FLSA: Temporary, 1099 contract Location: In person, St. Louis, MO. Candidates must live in the St. Louis area. Engagement: Approximately 1-2 weeks of curriculum development, 3 weeks of full-time, in-person instruction (up to 8 hours per day, 120 instructional hours), and 1 week for post-cohort assessment. November 2026 January 2027 The Technical Instructor, Cloud & DevOps Support at LaunchCode connects talent to opportunity by leading an intensive, short-term cohort that prepares employees of an employer partner to move from geospatial roles into tier-2 technical support roles. Teaching in person in downtown St. Louis, the Technical Instructor takes adult learners with little or no infrastructure background to a working understanding of Linux, Git, networking, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, CI/CD and GitOps in approximately 120 hours. Before the cohort begins, the Technical Instructor will assist LaunchCode with building a course and hands-on labs that reflect the partner's tools and tier-2 support workflows. The work is hands-on: labs, troubleshooting practice and realistic support scenarios built from the partner's own logs, tickets and runbooks. The Technical Instructor tracks every learner's progress, provides weekly updates to the program team, and produces the ranked results and written strengths-and-gaps summaries the partner will use to decide who advances. This role suits an experienced cloud infrastructure practitioner who can explain complex systems to someone seeing them for the first time and who wants to help adult learners change careers in a matter of weeks. Essential Duties/Responsibilities: Advise on technical accuracy, scope and sequencing of lessons, labs and exercises across Linux, Git, networking, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, CI/CD and GitOps Help translate the partner's tier-2 support work into realistic exercises and troubleshooting scenarios built from its mock logs, tickets and runbooks Review and test labs in the provided environment before the cohort, flagging gaps or errors to the curriculum team Share feedback with the curriculum team during the cohort on what is and isn't working, based on learner progress Deliver the full curriculum in person, up to 8 hours per day, using a mix of direct instruction, lab work, troubleshooting practice, Q& A and assessment Teach Linux and Git fundamentals: filesystem navigation, processes, system and application logs, permissions and ownership, exit codes and error output, commits, branches and remotes Teach networking and containers: the client-server model, IP addresses, ports and DNS, network testing utilities, containers versus virtual machines, and running, inspecting and debugging Docker containers Teach Kubernetes and AWS: desired state and reconciliation, pods, deployments, services and nodes, kubectl troubleshooting (CrashLoopBackOff, Pending, ImagePullBackOff), IAM roles and policies, and how EKS relates to EC2 and AWS identity Teach delivery and troubleshooting: CI/CD pipeline stages and failed-job analysis, GitOps concepts, Argo CD application states, and structured investigation of simulated tier-2 tickets and runbooks Lead hands-on labs in the provided lab environment, mirroring real tier-2 support work Explain technical concepts in plain language so learners can both perform a task and explain why it works Adjust pacing and provide individual support for adult learners with varied technical backgrounds, keeping all learners progressing on a compressed timeline Track each learner's progress on hands-on exercises and supply weekly progress data to the LaunchCode program manager for partner updates Score learners, produce a ranked list of all learners, and write a short summary of each learner's strengths and gaps Coordinate with the LaunchCode program manager on schedules, attendance and reporting