Principal Platform Engineer

Houlihan Lokey; Gurugram District; On-site; INR 3,000,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Houlihan Lokey is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer in Gurgaon to lead cloud-native platform architecture for large-scale financial applications. You will drive Kubernetes multi-region topologies, build foundational tooling in Golang and Python, and mentor engineers across the team.

This role emphasizes hands-on development, policy-as-code, secure supply chains, and enterprise-grade CI/CD. You will shape the platform roadmap within the Data Strategy Group to support scalable, resilient

Qualifications

• 7+ years in Platform Engineering, SRE, Distributed Systems, or Cloud Architecture.
• Proven ability to design scalable cloud topologies (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Hands-on coding in Golang or Python with scripting skills.

Responsibilities

• Define target-state architecture for cloud-native platform and multi-region topologies.
• Lead by writing production-grade code and creating reusable infra tooling.
• Mentor engineers, conduct design reviews, and drive RFC processes.
• Architect multi-cluster Kubernetes topologies with best practices for scheduling and service mesh.
• Design automated CI/CD pipelines with canary/blue-green deployment and golden paths.
• Embed DevSecOps with policy-as-code, centralized secrets, and SBOM compliance.
• Drive observability with OpenTelemetry, SLIs/SLOs, and RCA for incidents.
• Optimize cloud costs with multi-region traffic routing and right-sizing.

Skills

Golang

Python

Mentorship

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS or equivalent

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

ArgoCD/Flux

OpenTelemetry

HashiCorp Vault

Job description

Business Unit:

Data Strategy Group

Industry:

No Industry

Overview

Houlihan Lokey, Inc. (NYSE:HLI) is a leading global investment bank recognized for delivering independent strategic and financial advice to corporations, financial sponsors, and governments. With uniquely deep industry expertise, broad international reach, and a partnership approach rooted in trust, the firm provides innovative, integrated solutions across mergers and acquisitions, capital solutions, financial restructuring, and financial and valuation advisory. Our unmatched transaction volumes provide differentiated, data-driven perspectives that help our clients achieve their most critical goals. To learn more about Houlihan Lokey, please visit HL.com.

Scope

We areseekinga highly accomplished Principal Platform Engineer to serve as the technical authority and architectural leader for our cloud-native platform and infrastructure within the Financial Platform organization. In this role, you will define the platform architecture roadmap, design mission-critical infrastructure patterns, and lead the technical execution of platforms that power large-scale, distributed financial applications.

Key Responsibilities

• Platform Architecture & Strategic Direction: Define and drive the target-state architecture for our next-generation, cloud-native platform (Kubernetes, multi-region cloud topologies, and AI/workload enablement). Translate overarching business goals into scalable, resilient, and decoupled platform capabilities.

• Hands-On Core Engineering: Lead by example by writing production-grade code, building foundational custom tooling/operators (Golang, Python), authoring reusable Terraform modules, and designing reference implementations for engineering teams.

• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Serve as a mentor and technical coach to junior and mid-level engineers. Facilitate design reviews,establisharchitecture RFC processes, conduct deep code/infrastructure reviews, and foster a strong culture of engineering excellence.

• Container Platforms & Orchestration: Architect resilient, multi-cluster Kubernetes topologies at scale. Define best practices for workload scheduling, networking (service mesh), custom controllers/operators,GitOpsworkflows (ArgoCD/Flux), and multi-tenant isolation.

• Enterprise CI/CD & Developer Experience (DevEx):Architect automated, self-service golden paths and progressive delivery pipelines (canary,blue-green) that minimize cognitive load for application developers while ensuring strict deployment guardrails.

• Zero-Trust Security & Policy-as-Code: EmbedDevSecOpsat the architectural level—designing policy-as-code frameworks (OPA/Kyverno), centralized secrets management (HashiCorpVault), secure supply chain standards (SBOM, image signing,Trivy), and compliance baselines (SOC 2, ISO 27001).

• Observability, SRE & Chaos Engineering: Design holistic telemetry strategies utilizingOpenTelemetry. Define enterprise SLI/SLO standards, error budgetpolicies, resilience testing/chaos engineering, and lead complex root‑cause analyses (RCA) for critical production incidents.

• FinOps & Performance Optimization: Architect cost‑efficient cloud topologies. Establish capacity planning models, multi‑region traffic routing, right‑sizing strategies, and automated cost‑governance guardrails.

Basic Qualifications

• Experience: 7+years of hands‑on experience in Platform Engineering, SRE, Distributed Systems, or Cloud Architecture, with a proventrack recordof designing andoperatinglarge‑scale, production‑grade distributed systems.

• Architecture & System Design: Demonstratedexpertisein architecting complex,highly available, fault‑tolerant, and secure cloud topologies (AWS, Azure, or GCP).

• Deep Hands-on Coding & Automation: Proficiencyin at least one modern systems programming language (e.g., Golang, Python ) along with advanced scripting (Bash).Strong foundationin data structures, algorithms, and systems software design.

• Infrastructure-as-Code Mastery: Expert-levelproficiencywith Terraform (custom provider/module development, state locking, drift detection) and Policy-as-Code engines (e.g., OPA, Rego,Kyverno).

• Kubernetes Internals: Comprehensive understanding of Kubernetes internals (control plane components, CNI/CSI, custom controllers/operators, RBAC, API extensions, and scheduling primitives).

• Mentorship & Influence: Proventrack recordof guiding junior engineers, driving engineering consensus across disparate teams, and leading technical initiatives without direct authority.

• Observability & Reliability: Hands‑on experience with modern observability platforms, distributed tracing withOpenTelemetry, Prometheus/Grafana ecosystems, and enterprise SRE practices.

• Education: Bachelor’s orMaster’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience architecting platforms within highly regulated domains (e.g., Financial Services, FinTech, Banking).

• Deep experience withSecuring Cloud NativePlatform.

• Experience designing, building, oroperatinglarge‑scale Data Platforms is highly desirable.

• Active contributions to open-source cloud-native projects (CNCF ecosystem).

_ We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. _

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