Lead DevOps / Platform Engineering Lead

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

To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process.

Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.