About the Role

We are seeking an experienced Lead DevOps / Platform Engineering Lead to drive the strategy, architecture, and evolution of our cloud-native platform.

This is a senior technical leadership role responsible for building scalable, secure, reliable, and cost-effective engineering platforms that enable development teams to deliver software quickly and safely. The successful candidate will combine deep expertise in AWS, Kubernetes, DevOps, Platform Engineering, Infrastructure as Code, DevSecOps, Observability, and Software Engineering.

This role requires a strong Java software engineering background, combined with extensive experience in cloud infrastructure and platform operations. We are looking for a leader who understands both application development and platform engineering, and who can effectively bridge the gap between software teams and infrastructure teams.

The ideal candidate will be a hands-on technical leader capable of defining engineering standards, mentoring teams, making architectural decisions, and driving automation and platform modernization across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Engineering & Developer Enablement

Define and execute the organization's Platform Engineering strategy.
Establish self-service infrastructure capabilities.
Create reusable platform templates, golden paths, and engineering standards.
Improve developer productivity through automation and platform tooling.
Drive engineering excellence through standardization and governance.

Cloud Architecture & Infrastructure

Design and operate enterprise-scale AWS environments.
Drive cloud cost optimization initiatives.
Define infrastructure standards and cloud operating models.

Core AWS Services

EKS
ECS
EC2
S3
EBS
EFS
IAM
KMS
Secrets Manager
Route53
VPC
SNS
SQS
EventBridge
CloudWatch
X-Ray

Kubernetes Platform Leadership

Lead Kubernetes platform architecture and operations.
Define multi-cluster deployment strategies.
Establish workload governance and cluster security policies.
Design scalable and resilient container platforms.
Implement zero-downtime deployment practices.
Optimize platform cost and performance.

Kubernetes Ecosystem

Kubernetes (EKS and self-managed)
Helm
NGINX Ingress
AWS Load Balancer Controller
Rancher

DevOps, CI/CD & GitOps

Define and standardize modern software delivery practices.
Design and maintain enterprise CI/CD pipelines.
Drive GitOps adoption across engineering teams.
Establish deployment, rollback, and release management standards.
Improve deployment reliability and operational efficiency.

Technologies

Bamboo
ArgoCD
GitHub Actions
GitLab CI

Artifactory

Infrastructure as Code

Lead Infrastructure as Code practices across the organization.
Build reusable Terraform modules and platform blueprints.
Promote policy-as-code and governance automation.
Implement drift detection and infrastructure compliance controls.
Establish IaC development lifecycle and quality standards.

Technologies

Terraform
AWS CDK

Observability, Reliability & SRE

Define platform reliability standards and operational excellence practices.
Implement monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting solutions.
Establish SLI/SLO frameworks and error budget management.
Drive incident response and post-incident review processes.
Improve platform stability and availability.

Observability Stack

Monitoring

Prometheus
Grafana

Logging

ELK Stack

Tracing

OpenTelemetry

Security & DevSecOps

Embed security into the software development lifecycle.
Establish IAM and access management standards.
Implement secrets management strategies.
Automate security scanning and compliance validation.
Support compliance initiatives including SOC2 and ISO27001.

Security Technologies

IAM
Vault
AWS Secrets Manager
Container Security Scanning
Runtime Security Monitoring

Software Engineering & Java Development

This role requires a strong software engineering foundation.

The successful candidate must have significant hands-on experience developing and operating enterprise-grade Java applications and microservices. Platform decisions should be informed by a deep understanding of application architecture, developer workflows, runtime performance, and operational requirements.

Required Java Experience

Minimum 5+ years of hands-on Java development experience.
Strong experience with Java-based enterprise applications.
Experience designing and building microservices architectures.
Strong understanding of application performance and troubleshooting.
Experience deploying and operating Java applications on Kubernetes.
Experience with cloud-native application architecture patterns.
Knowledge of distributed systems and scalable application design.

Preferred Java Technologies

Java 17+
Spring Boot
Maven / Gradle
REST APIs
gRPC
Event-Driven Architectures

Lead-Level Expectation

The candidate must be able to:

Engage credibly with software engineering teams.
Review application architectures.
Troubleshoot application and infrastructure issues.
Understand JVM performance considerations.
Design platforms optimized for Java-based workloads.
Drive cloud-native modernization initiatives.

Data & Messaging Technologies

The successful candidate should have practical knowledge of modern data and messaging platforms.

Databases

PostgreSQL
MySQL
DynamoDB

Messaging & Event Streaming

Kafka / MSK
RabbitMQ
Redis

Architecture & Design Expertise

The ideal candidate demonstrates expertise in:

Microservices architectures
Event-driven architectures
Serverless architectures
Multi-region deployments
High-availability systems
Distributed systems
Resilience engineering
Circuit breaker patterns
Retry strategies
Disaster recovery planning
Platform scalability design

Leadership Responsibilities

As a technical leader, you will:

Define platform and engineering standards.
Mentor DevOps, Platform, SRE, and Software Engineers.
Lead system architecture reviews and technical governance forums.
Drive engineering best practices across teams.
Influence technology strategy and roadmap decisions.
Partner with architects, engineering managers, product leaders, and security teams.
Build strong relationships across organizational boundaries.
Champion a culture of continuous improvement and operational excellence.

Required Qualifications

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related field.
Equivalent industry experience will also be considered.

Professional Experience

10+ years of experience in DevOps, Platform Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, Site Reliability Engineering, or related disciplines.
5+ years of experience designing and operating AWS environments at scale.
5+ years of production Kubernetes experience.
5+ years of hands-on Java software development experience.
Proven experience leading technical initiatives across multiple engineering teams.
Proven experience building and operating mission-critical production platforms.

Preferred Qualifications

Certifications

AWS Solutions Architect Professional
AWS DevOps Engineer Professional
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
Terraform Associate

Additional Experience

Enterprise governance frameworks
Regulated industry environments
Large-scale SaaS platforms
FinOps and cloud cost management

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 12 months, the successful candidate will:

Establish a clear platform engineering roadmap.
Standardize infrastructure provisioning and deployment practices.
Expand GitOps adoption across engineering teams.
Improve deployment frequency and reliability.
Increase platform observability and operational maturity.
Reduce cloud costs through architecture and optimization initiatives.
Strengthen security and compliance posture.
Deliver self-service platform capabilities that improve developer productivity.
Build a culture of engineering excellence, automation, reliability, and continuous improvement.

Ideal Candidate Profile

You are a technical leader who combines:

Deep AWS expertise
Advanced Kubernetes knowledge
Strong Terraform and Infrastructure-as-Code capabilities
Modern DevOps and GitOps experience
Platform Engineering leadership
DevSecOps and Observability expertise
Strong Java software engineering background
Architectural decision-making skills
Coaching and mentoring abilities
Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills

Our Interview Practices