Lead Platform Engineer

Exiger; McLean (VA); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary Time Off

Health, vision, and dental benefits

16 weeks of paid parental leave

Hybrid work policy

Wellness stipends and programming

Educational certifications reimburse-

Job summary

Exiger seeks a Lead Platform Engineer to steer large, cross-team platform programs across AWS and GovCloud. This role emphasizes security, reliability, and scalable infrastructure, with a focus on IaC, multi-region CI/CD, and strong architectural judgment.

As an individual contributor, you will mentor engineers, own on-call processes, and help set best practices for platform tooling. A hybrid US-based position offering significant impact and collaboration with product, data, and AI/ML teams.

Qualifications

• Technical lead on large cross-team infrastructure with many stakeholders.
• Production-proven depth in AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes/EKS, and CI/CD.
• Excellent judgment on architecture with documented tradeoffs.
• Experience translating FedRAMP, NIST 800-53, and SOC 2 into automated controls.
• Strong written and verbal communication, including decision records and incident reviews.
• 10+ years engineering experience, including 3+ years as technical lead on cross-team programs.
• U.S. citizenship required for access to Exiger's federal environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead large cross-team platform programs from design through delivery.
• Make and own architecture decisions across compute, network, identity, and account structure.
• Reduce complexity by consolidating patterns and retiring unused ones.
• Design enterprise IaC frameworks and multi-region CI/CD with gates.
• Architect guardrails and tooling for GovCloud environments.
• Design DR, capacity, and resilience strategies with RTO/RPO targets and test under load.
• Partner with product, data, and AI/ML teams to design platform infrastructure.
• Communicate plans, risks, and tradeoffs to engineers and stakeholders.
• Own on-call escalation paths and drive incident-response improvements.
• Set platform best practices and CI testing standards.
• Shape adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools with validation standards.
• Mentor engineers and help raise the hiring bar.

Skills

AWS

Terraform

Kubernetes/EKS

CI/CD

Python

Go

Technical leadership

Tools

IaC frameworks

Job description

Lead Platform Engineer

LOCATION: Mclean, VA, Richmond, VA or NYC

Engineering | Platform Engineering | Hybrid (US)

U.S. Citizenship Required

We're looking for a Lead Platform Engineer to be the technical lead for our largest, most cross-cutting platform programs. This is work that spans multiple engineering teams, has many stakeholders, and carries real security, compliance, and reliability risk across commercial AWS and our FedRAMP-authorized environments in AWS GovCloud. The strongest candidates are excellent technical leaders who are also great to work with. At this level, your impact comes as much from sound judgment, clear communication, and the trust of other teams as from deep AWS and Kubernetes expertise. This is an individual contributor role with no direct reports. You'll lead through technical judgment and by making the engineers around you better.

What You'll Do

• Lead large, cross-team platform programs such as multi-region EKS, GovCloud platform expansion, or a re-architecture of the IaC framework, from design through delivery.


• Make and own architecture decisions across compute, network topology, identity, account structure, and delivery, and document the tradeoffs clearly.


• Reduce complexity across platform services and processes by consolidating one-off patterns, retiring what's no longer needed, and helping teams do more with less.


• Design enterprise IaC frameworks and multi-region CI/CD with approval gates, automated rollback, and policy enforcement.


• Architect guardrails and developer tooling so that every engineer can work safely in FedRAMP and GovCloud environments.


• Design DR, capacity, and resilience strategies with explicit RTO/RPO targets, and validate them under sustained load, failure injection, and chaos testing.


• Partner with product, data, and AI/ML teams to design platform infrastructure that fits how those teams build and run their systems.


• Communicate plans, risks, and tradeoffs to engineers, security, compliance, federal program teams, and business stakeholders. Surface risks early and manage cross-team dependencies.


• Own on-call escalation paths, lead the hardest incidents, and drive improvements to incident response across the teams the platform serves.


• Set platform best practices and quality standards that other teams adopt, including IaC testing, policy tests, and failure testing in CI.


• Shape how the platform team adopts AI-assisted engineering tools, with clear validation standards and boundaries that respect federal compliance requirements.


• Mentor and coach engineers across teams, delegate meaningful work, and help raise the hiring bar for platform roles.

What You'll Bring

• A track record as the technical lead on large, cross-team infrastructure or platform programs with many stakeholders.


• Advanced, production-proven depth in AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes/EKS, and CI/CD, including architecture decisions that other teams had to live with.


• Excellent judgment on architecture across many aspects of a project, with the reasoning and rejected alternatives to show for it.


• Concrete examples of reducing complexity in systems or processes, with measurable outcomes.


• Experience translating FedRAMP, NIST 800-53, and SOC 2 requirements into automated, enforceable controls with continuous evidence.


• Excellent written and verbal communication, including design proposals, decision records, and incident reviews, and the ability to explain tradeoffs to engineers, auditors, and business leaders.


• Evidence of growing other engineers through mentoring, coaching, and delegation.


• Strong Python or Go skills for platform tooling and automation.


• Typically 10+ years of engineering experience, including 3+ years as a technical lead on cross-team programs. We calibrate on demonstrated scope and judgment, not tenure.


• U.S. citizenship, required for access to Exiger's FedRAMP federal environments where legally required.

Nice to Have

• Experience with one or more of the following is a plus:


• Leading or playing a central role in a FedRAMP authorization, continuous monitoring program, or SOC 2 Type II audit


• AWS GovCloud, including partition isolation and service parity constraints


• AWS Professional or Specialty certifications, CKA/CKS, or HashiCorp Terraform certification


• Internal developer platforms or developer portals (Backstage or equivalent)


• Service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) and container supply chain security


• HashiCorp Vault at scale


• Chaos engineering (AWS Fault Injection Service, Chaos Mesh, Litmus)


• FinOps and automated cost controls


• Infrastructure for data and AI/ML workloads (GPU scheduling on EKS, Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker)

Why This Role Matters

Everything Exiger ships, commercial and federal, moves through our platform. As Lead Platform Engineer, you'll decide how simple, safe, and fast that path is for every engineering team. The architecture calls you make, the complexity you remove, and the engineers you grow will compound across the whole organization and give Exiger the foundation it needs to serve customers in highly regulated federal environments.

Why You'll Love Working at Exiger:

• High-performance culture rooted in accountability, collaboration, and a shared commitment to excellence.


• Discretionary Time Off for all employees, with no maximum limits on time off


• Industry leading health, vision, and dental benefits


• Competitive compensation package


• 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave


• Flexible, hybrid approach to working from home and in the office where applicable


• Focus on wellness and employee health through stipends and dedicated wellness programming


• Purposeful career development programs with reimbursement provided for educational certifications

#Li-Hybrid

Exiger is named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Supplier Risk Management, twice selected as one of Fast Company's 'Brands That Matter,' and recipient of the Third Party Risk Association's Innovator Award, Exiger's technology has been recognized by leading analyst evaluations and 50+ awards. Learn more at Exiger.com and follow Exiger on LinkedIn.

At Exiger, our values define how we work and why we lead. We are mission-inspired, imagination-driven, trust-anchored, and compassion-focused-committed to building technology that makes the world safer, more transparent, and more resilient.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or protected veteran status, or any other legally protected basis, in accordance with applicable law.

Exiger's hybrid work policy is periodically reviewed and adjusted to align with evolving business needs.