Lead Cloud Platform Engineer

White Bay; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

White Bay in Sydney is seeking an experienced Lead Cloud Platform Engineer to own the AWS platform, drive a cloud modernisation programme and lead a DevOps team. The role is hands-on (about 70%) with the remaining time for technical leadership, mentoring and establishing engineering standards.

You will manage an AWS/ECS/Fargate environment, mentor offshore DevOps engineers, and work with security/compliance frameworks while enabling automation and cost optimization.

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on AWS engineering experience (ECS, Fargate, production infra).
• Advanced Terraform expertise with modular design and scalable infra.

Responsibilities

• Lead AWS platform direction and establish engineering standards.
• Drive modernisation of ECS/Fargate and Elastic Beanstalk infrastructure.
• Own and evolve Terraform infra, including remote state and drift detection.
• Migrate deployment pipelines to GitHub Actions and GitOps with secure patterns.
• Improve observability, incident response, and reliability engineering.

Skills

AWS ECS Fargate

Terraform

GitHub Actions

GitOps

Python

Bash

Security & Compliance

Technical leadership

Tools

Terraform modules

Job description

AWS | Terraform | DevOps | Technical Leadership

A growing Australian business operating in the consumer financial services sector. With more than 700 employees across Australia and internationally, is looking to grow its Sydney based cloud team.

As the business continues to evolve its technology platforms, an opportunity has emerged for an experienced Lead Cloud Platform Engineer to take ownership of its AWS infrastructure, drive a significant cloud modernisation programme and provide technical leadership to an established DevOps team.

This is not a traditional management position. Approximately 70% of your time will be spent actively engineering, automating and improving the platform, with the remaining 30% dedicated to technical leadership, mentoring and establishing engineering standards.

If you're an accomplished Senior Platform Engineer ready to take the next step, or an established technical lead who wants to remain firmly hands‑on, this position offers substantial autonomy, technical complexity and the opportunity to make a genuine impact.

The Opportunity

You’ll take technical ownership of an AWS environment that combines modern, Terraform-managed ECS and Fargate infrastructure with an existing Elastic Beanstalk estate undergoing modernisation.

Working closely with the Senior Manager of DevOps and Quality Engineering, you’ll lead two experienced DevOps Engineers based in Vietnam, setting technical direction, establishing priorities and ensuring engineering standards are consistently maintained.

The business is investing in automation, AI-enabled operations, improved observability and more efficient cloud infrastructure. You’ll play a central role in translating these investments into practical engineering improvements.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction of the AWS platform, establishing engineering standards, reusable infrastructure patterns and operational best practices.
• Drive the continued modernisation of the AWS environment, particularly ECS, Fargate and existing Elastic Beanstalk infrastructure.
• Own and evolve Terraform infrastructure, including shared modules, remote state management, drift detection and infrastructure security.
• Lead the migration from AWS CodePipeline and CodeBuild to GitHub Actions and GitOps, introducing secure, repeatable and reliable deployment processes.
• Strengthen production reliability, observability and incident response through improved monitoring, alerting, service level objectives and runbooks.
• Build automation using Python, Bash and emerging AI technologies to reduce manual operational tasks and improve engineering efficiency.
• Embed security and compliance controls into infrastructure and deployment processes, supporting ISO 27001, PCI DSS and other relevant frameworks.
• Improve AWS cost visibility and optimisation through effective resource tagging, monitoring, right-sizing and FinOps practices.
• Mentor and technically lead two experienced offshore DevOps Engineers, providing guidance, reviewing engineering work and coordinating delivery priorities.
• Partner with software engineering, architecture, cyber security and other stakeholders to ensure the platform remains scalable, secure and aligned with business requirements.

About You

You’ll be an experienced, technically accomplished cloud or platform engineer who enjoys solving complex infrastructure challenges and taking responsibility for delivering meaningful improvements.

Importantly, you’re someone who leads through technical credibility. You’re comfortable making architectural recommendations, challenging existing approaches and mentoring engineers, but you still enjoy getting into the code and solving problems yourself.

Ideally, you’ll bring:

• Extensive hands‑on AWS engineering experience, particularly ECS, Fargate and production cloud infrastructure.
• Advanced Terraform expertise, including modular infrastructure design, reusable components and managing infrastructure at scale.
• Strong CI/CD engineering capabilities, particularly GitHub Actions, GitOps, secure deployment patterns and automated release management.
• Experience operating and improving production cloud environments, including incident management, observability and reliability engineering.
• Strong scripting and automation capabilities using Python and Bash.
• Practical DevSecOps experience, ideally within environments operating under ISO 27001, PCI DSS or similar regulatory and compliance frameworks.
• Experience identifying and delivering AWS infrastructure cost improvements.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, mentoring or coaching experience, ideally involving distributed engineering teams.
• The ability to independently manage priorities, communicate technical decisions and take ownership of engineering outcomes.

Experience with AWS Bedrock, SageMaker, AI-assisted operations or agentic automation would be highly regarded.

Although Kubernetes experience is transferable, the organisation’s production container environment is built around AWS ECS and Fargate. Direct experience with these technologies will be particularly valuable.

Why Consider This Opportunity?

This role offers considerably more than maintaining an existing cloud environment.

You’ll join a business that recognises the importance of engineering investment and is actively modernising its platform to support continued growth.

You’ll have the opportunity to:

• Take genuine technical ownership of an established AWS platform.
• Influence engineering standards, technical priorities and architectural decisions.
• Deliver a substantial programme of infrastructure and CI/CD modernisation.
• Introduce automation and AI-driven improvements into day‑to‑day platform operations.
• Lead and develop experienced engineers without moving away from hands‑on engineering.
• Work closely with senior engineering leadership and influence the broader technology strategy.
• Enjoy a hybrid working arrangement based in Sydney, with five office days per fortnight.