Our client is looking for an AI-first Principal Platform Engineer to serve as the architectural and technical lead for our Education platform ecosystem. You’ll define the strategic evolution of our cloud infrastructure, engineering a unified, secure, and highly automated platform that empowers five global product tribes to deliver mission-critical software with zero friction.
Role Purpose
Platform Engineers ensure application platforms are operational to deliver software as a service to clients. This role focuses on:
- Automating code release across engineering departments
- Ensuring stable platforms for code delivery
- Enabling monitoring, security, audit, and resilience capabilities
Strategic Objectives
Platform as a Product
Design and govern a standardized Internal Developer Platform (IDP) that abstracts infrastructure complexity for our 150+ global engineering force.
Architectural Governance
Lead the transition toward unified Infrastructure-as-Code standards (Terraform/Bicep) and CI/CD excellence across our Azure-heavy estate.
Security & Compliance by Design
Automate audit and compliance structures within pipelines, ensuring security posture (Azure Defender, ISO 27001 readiness) is automated and unblockable.
Observability Strategy
Define global instrumentation standards using Datadog to ensure proactive system health and rapid incident response across distributed products.
Technology Stack
Cloud & Infrastructure
- Primary: Azure (expert-level required)
- Secondary: AWS
- Legacy: VMWare/AVS, Rackspace (migration planned)
Core Technologies
- IaC: Terraform and Bicep (mastery required)
- Orchestration: Kubernetes/AKS with service mesh and cluster security
- CI/CD: TeamCity, Octopus Deploy, Azure DevOps (convergence needed)
- Databases: MSSQL, MySQL automation
- Monitoring: Datadog (primary), Azure Monitor
AI-First Approach
- Leverage LLMs and AI coding assistants for IaC generation
- Automate documentation and pipeline configurations
- ML-driven observability for predictive incident detection
- Self-healing infrastructure patterns
Required Qualifications
Education
Degree in computer science, mathematics, engineering, or equivalent industry experience.
Essential Experience
AI-Driven Automation
Proven experience architecting and implementing AI-driven automation across the SDLC, leveraging LLMs and AI coding assistants to accelerate IaC generation, automate documentation, and standardize CI/CD pipeline configurations across global teams.
Containerization & Orchestration
Deep architectural expertise in Kubernetes/AKS, focusing on scalability, service mesh, and cluster security.
Infrastructure-as-Code Mastery
Mastery of BICEP and Terraform to build modular, reusable, and compliant-by-default infrastructure.
Complex Cloud Migrations
Extensive experience designing and executing complex cloud migrations, specifically transitioning legacy VMWare or private cloud workloads into Azure-native architectures.
Platform Strategy in High-Growth SaaS
Significant experience leading platform strategy within high-growth SaaS environments, managing technical debt and integration challenges of M&A-driven portfolios.
Cloud Security Expertise
Expert-level command of cloud security frameworks and vulnerability management (Azure Defender), with “Security-by-Design” approach to platform engineering.