Platform Engineer Lead
Platform Lead
Job Type
Full-time
Description
Our client is hiring a Platform Lead to own production infrastructure and lead a small team of mid-level SREs. This is a working lead position: you’ll be hands-on with the systems every day while providing technical direction and mentorship to the team.
Kubernetes is the foundation of how production systems run, and deep operational expertise with it is non-negotiable. You should know your way around cluster operations, networking, ingress, storage, and troubleshooting at a level that comes from running real workloads. Strong AWS fundamentals are equally important.
Beyond that core, the role has real room to grow. This is a small, profitable company, and the right person will have the opportunity to shape the scope of this position based on what they bring, whether that’s deeper automation, security, developer experience, or something else entirely. The role can evolve based on individual strengths and interests.
You’ll wear a lot of hats. One day you’re debugging a core platform issue, and the next you might be handling hands-on technical needs across the environment. If that range sounds engaging rather than exhausting, keep reading.
Why Join
Real scope at a real company. You’ll own the platform, not a slice of it.
Genuine mentorship. Leadership brings extensive engineering experience and is invested in developing the person in this role across vendor management, people leadership, and organizational dynamics.
A path to senior leadership. This role is designed to build experience that supports continued career growth.
AI in practice, not just in theory. The engineering team is actively integrating AI into workflows and exploring practical applications that improve productivity and decision making.
Room to shape the role. Kubernetes expertise is the baseline. The rest of the scope evolves based on strengths and business priorities.
Requirements
What You'll Do
Platform Engineering (Core)
Design, operate, and improve Kubernetes-based infrastructure supporting production systems. This is the majority of the work and where deep expertise matters most.
Ensure production systems are reliable, secure, observable, and cost-efficient. Own the end-to-end health of the platform.
Lead platform initiatives including improving deployment pipelines, modernizing systems, automating operations, and reducing technical debt.
Provide clear documentation, reference architectures, and runbooks the team can follow and build on.
Participate in on-call rotation and contribute to strong incident response practices.
Leverage AI-assisted tooling where it adds value, such as log analysis, automated runbooks, and predictive scaling, while maintaining strong engineering judgment.
Operational Excellence
Set practical, achievable standards for uptime, monitoring, security, and operational practices.
Help the team adopt consistent processes for deployment, alerting, and incident reviews.
Model strong engineering fundamentals including clear commits, thorough documentation, meaningful tests, and ownership of outcomes.
Ensure monitoring and capacity planning are proactive rather than reactive.
Team Leadership
Provide day-to-day technical mentorship, especially where the team lacks senior depth. Guide engineers through unfamiliar problems and approaches.
Participate in design and code reviews to help the team make consistent, thoughtful technical decisions.
Provide clear and timely feedback to support growth and skill development.
Create clarity around priorities and break down work so the team can make steady progress.
Address performance or collaboration challenges early and constructively.
Support thoughtful hiring practices focused on fundamentals and long-term potential.
Cost & Vendor Management
Own cloud budget considerations and maintain predictable infrastructure spending. Use cost visibility tooling to identify optimization opportunities.
Evaluate tools and vendors based on long-term value, reliability, and simplicity.
Manage vendor relationships and contracts to ensure service quality and cost alignment.
What You Bring (Required)
Applicable degree or equivalent practical experience. Demonstrated capability is more important than formal credentials.
5+ years of progressive experience in infrastructure, SRE, or platform engineering roles.
Deep hands-on experience operating Kubernetes in production environments, including cluster lifecycle management, networking, ingress controllers, storage, and troubleshooting.
Strong AWS fundamentals including VPC, IAM, EC2, EKS, S3, CloudWatch, and cost optimization.
Strong Linux systems knowledge and networking fundamentals.
Track record of operating and improving production systems within small or mid-sized engineering teams.
Experience mentoring engineers and helping develop strong engineering habits.
Ability to balance hands-on technical work with technical leadership responsibilities.
Clear, calm communication skills, especially during incidents or operational pressure.
Nice to Have
Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform, Pulumi, or similar.
Familiarity with CI/CD pipeline design and GitOps workflows.
Experience integrating AI tools into engineering workflows.
Prior experience in a technical leadership or team lead capacity, or strong individual contributors ready to step into a lead role.
Familiarity with ingress controller ecosystem changes and evolving best practices.
This organization operates as a nimble, empowered team with meaningful impact. The hybrid work model supports flexibility while maintaining collaboration through periodic in-person engagement as needed.
