Principal Engineer - Database Platform & SRE (Remote)

Lumen; Bismarck (ND); Remote; USD 152,000 - 203,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Life benefits

Voluntary lifestyle benefits

Bonus structure information

Job summary

Lumen seeks a Principal Engineer for Database Platform Engineering & SRE to lead the transformation of our database organization toward a modern Platform Engineering and SRE operating model. This role emphasizes standardization, automation, reliability, and cloud readiness across the database estate.

You will mentor teams, drive tooling like Terraform and CI/CD, and partner with Operations, Security, Cloud, and Architecture to deliver scalable, observable, and secure data platforms.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of experience in database engineering, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE, cloud engineering, or related disciplines.
• Proven experience leading large-scale engineering, automation, or transformation initiatives.
• Experience driving standardization, reliability improvements, and operational efficiency across large platforms.
• Strong experience with IaC, automation, CI/CD, and modern engineering practices.
• Demonstrated success leading cross-functional technical initiatives and influencing engineering teams.
• Strong leadership, communication, problem-solving, and stakeholder management skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead the transformation of DBA teams toward Platform Engineering and SRE practices.
• Drive automation-first and reliability-focused operating models.
• Develop standards, processes, and best practices for consistency and scale.
• Identify and reduce repetitive manual activities across database operations.
• Analyze incidents and requests to identify automation opportunities.
• Drive reductions in ticket volume and technical debt.
• Lead brownfield modernization and standardization across database platforms.
• Establish automation frameworks, governance, and reusable engineering capabilities.
• Establish proactive monitoring, observability, and performance management practices.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across teams.

Skills

Platform engineering

SRE processing

Automation

Leadership

IaC (Infrastructure-as-Code)

CI/CD

Observability

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

AWX

GitOps

CI/CD pipelines

Scripting

Job description

Lumen seeks a Principal Engineer for Database Platform Engineering & SRE to lead the transformation of our database organization toward a modern Platform Engineering and SRE operating model. This role emphasizes standardization, automation, reliability, and cloud readiness across the database estate.

You will mentor teams, drive tooling like Terraform and CI/CD, and partner with Operations, Security, Cloud, and Architecture to deliver scalable, observable, and secure data platforms.