Principal Platform Engineer – DevOps/Developer Experience

Responsibilities

• Lead the highest-priority initiatives: clarify approach, resolve ambiguity, and deliver high-quality results with pragmatic trade-offs.
• Reduce cross-team friction by defining clear interfaces, breaking work into deliverable increments, and enabling parallel work through strong architectural boundaries.
• Establish and model engineering best practices: design docs/RFCs, architecture reviews, code review discipline, and effective automated testing.
• Promote API-first, “platform as a product” practices: consistent platform interfaces that reduce bespoke integrations and siloed solutions.
• Create reusable platform capabilities (templates, modules, golden paths) that reduce reinvention and speed up delivery for teams.
• Identify and implement automation (including agentic/AI-enabled workflows) that improves operational and delivery efficiency.
• Lead cross-cutting improvements that enhance stability and reduce toil: observability standards, alert hygiene, incident learning loops, and resilience patterns.
• Partner with operations and platform stakeholders to measurably improve reliability and reduce operational drag on delivery teams.
• Coach senior and staff engineers by pairing on real work, running reviews, and teaching pragmatic system-level thinking.
• Participate in the on-call rotation and contribute to service restoration, root-cause learning, and prevention.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 12+ years building, automating, and operating cloud-native platforms, infrastructure, and software delivery systems at scale.
• Experience applying full SDLC practices (design, build, test, deploy, operate) to platform and infrastructure work, treating platform capabilities as production-grade software.
• Experience leading large-scale, cross-functional technical initiatives with measurable business and engineering outcomes.
• 8+ years designing and operating microservices-based systems, including API design and versioning, authentication and authorization frameworks (e.g., OAuth, OIDC, IAM), and Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g., Terraform, Pulumi, or cloud-native tooling).
• 5+ years of hands‐on experience in at least three of the following: Kubernetes and container orchestration; public cloud infrastructure (any major provider); CI/CD and deployment automation; Infrastructure-as-Code and configuration management; production operations and reliability tooling.
• Ownership of production systems supporting business-critical workloads, including incident response, post‐incident reviews, and reliability improvements at scale.
• Experience implementing automated testing for platform capabilities: integration testing, contract testing, infrastructure validation, and deployment quality controls.
• Strong written and verbal communication, translating complex technical concepts for engineering, product, and executive audiences.

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in leading cross-functional technical initiatives, applying full SDLC practices, and implementing automation to enhance operational efficiency. Proficient in designing and operating cloud-native platforms and microservices-based systems with a focus on reliability and performance.

Hard Skills

• API Design and Versioning
• Kubernetes and Container Orchestration
• CI/CD and Deployment Automation
• Production Operations and Reliability Tooling
• Incident Response and Post‐Incident Reviews
• Integration Testing
• Contract Testing
• Infrastructure Validation
• Deployment Quality Controls
• Full SDLC Practices

Soft Skills

• Strong Written Communication
• Strong Verbal Communication
• Coaching and Mentoring

Industry Keywords

• Engineering Best Practices
• Observability Standards
• Incident Learning Loops
• Resilience Patterns
• Platform as a Product

Tools & Technologies

• Cloud Infrastructure (Any Major Provider)
• Automated Testing Tools
• Configuration Management Tools