Principal Platform Engineer

Abbott (abbottcareers2 board); Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

HIP PPO health plan

401(k) retirement plan

Tuition reimbursement

FreeU education benefit

Job summary

Abbott is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer to design, build, and operate secure, scalable cloud-native platforms supporting digital health and medical software. You will lead architecture on AWS, EKS, Terraform, and GitOps, mentor teams, and drive engineering excellence while staying hands-on with platform design and implementation.

You will collaborate with Cybersecurity, Regulatory, and Quality to ensure compliance with FDA and healthcare standards, deliver reliable CI/CD pipelines, and

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in a relevant field.
• 16+ years of experience in cloud architecture and enterprise-scale systems.
• Hands-on with Amazon EKS, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitOps, CI/CD.
• Experience designing secure, scalable distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture, design, and operation of cloud-native platforms on AWS.
• Define platform standards and engineering best practices.
• Mentor engineers and drive technical governance.
• Ensure regulatory and cybersecurity requirements are met.

Skills

Cloud architecture

Platform leadership

Distributed systems

DevOps / CI-CD

Architectural reviews

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science/Engineering

Tools

Amazon EKS

Kubernetes

Terraform

GitOps

ArgoCD

Flux

GitHub Actions

Job description

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals and branded generic medicines. Our 122,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Working at Abbott

At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and your family, be your true self, and live a full life. You'll also have access to:

• Career development with an international company where you can grow the career you dream of.
• Employees can qualify for free medical coverage in our Health Investment Plan (HIP) PPO medical plan in the next calendar year.
• An excellent retirement savings plan with a high employer contribution
• Tuition reimbursement, the Freedom 2 Save student debt program, and FreeU education benefit - an affordable and convenient path to getting a bachelor's degree.
• A company recognized as a great place to work in dozens of countries worldwide and named one of the most admired companies in the world by Fortune.
• A company that is recognized as one of the best big companies to work for as well as the best place to work for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists.

The Opportunity

The Principal Platform Engineer is responsible for designing, building, and operating secure, scalable, and compliant cloud-native platforms that support digital health, medical software, data, and AI/ML solutions. This role provides technical leadership across AWS cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, automation, cybersecurity, and software delivery. The successful candidate will establish platform standards, drive engineering excellence, and mentor teams while remaining hands‑on with platform design and implementation.

What You'll Work On

• Lead architecture, design, implementation, and operation of cloud-native platforms on AWS.
• Design and operate Kubernetes platforms using Amazon EKS.
• Define platform standards, reference architectures, and engineering best practices.
• Build and maintain cloud infrastructure using Terraform and Infrastructure-as-Code.
• Implement GitOps and CI/CD practices to automate infrastructure and application delivery.
• Develop reusable platform services, automation, and self‑service capabilities for engineering teams.
• Design secure cloud solutions using modern identity, access control, encryption, and secrets management practices.
• Partner with Cybersecurity, Privacy, Quality, and Regulatory teams to ensure compliance and audit readiness.
• Drive reliability, scalability, observability, and operational excellence across platform services.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership across multiple teams.
• Participate in architecture reviews, technical planning, and engineering governance activities.
• Support development of regulated healthcare and medical software solutions.
• Comply with FDA regulations, quality processes, cybersecurity standards, and other applicable regulatory requirements.

Skills and Competencies

Cloud & Platform Engineering AWS

• Amazon EKS
• Kubernetes
• Docker
• Helm
• Distributed Systems

Infrastructure Automation Terraform

• Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)
• GitOps
• ArgoCD or Flux

DevOps GitHub Enterprise

• GitHub Actions
• CI/CD Pipelines
• Automated Testing
• Release Automation

Security AWS IAM

• OIDC Federation
• Workload Identity
• Secrets Management
• Container Security
• DevSecOps

Leadership Technical Strategy

• Architecture & Design Reviews
• Cross‑Functional Collaboration
• Mentoring & Coaching
• Communication & Influencing

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• (16+ Bachelors OR 10+ Master’s Degree) years of experience in cloud architecture and enterprise‑scale systems.
• Hands‑on experience with Amazon EKS, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitOps, and modern CI/CD practices.
• Experience designing secure, highly available, scalable distributed systems.
• Experience leading technical initiatives across multiple teams and influencing engineering decisions.
• Proficiency in relevant software and system development tools (e.g., Java, C#, C++, Python, NodeJS).
• Strong experience with DevOps/CI-CD, containerization and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), IaC (e.g., Terraform), and observability.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in healthcare, digital health, medical device, life sciences, or other regulated industries.
• Experience supporting AI/ML and data platform workloads.
• Experience with healthcare interoperability standards such as FHIR, HL7, and DICOM.
• Experience designing and implementing secure cloud-native platforms.
• Experience supporting FDA-regulated software development environments.
• Strong understanding of cybersecurity principles, secure software development, and cloud security best practices.
• Experience supporting compliance initiatives and audits including: ISO 27001
• SOC 2
• HIPAA / HITECH
• FedRAMP
• NIST Cyb