Principal Platform Engineer

Flexential; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, Telehealth, Dental and Vision

HSA and FSA

AD&D

Disability insurance

Wellness Program

Job summary

Flexential is seeking a Principal Platform Engineer to lead the Platform Engineering team in the IT organization. You will plan roadmaps, define requirements, and own the design, deployment and operation of secure, high-availability platforms with OpenTelemetry observability and AI-enabled capabilities.

The role balances hands-on work with leadership responsibilities, including hiring, mentoring and setting technical strategy to ensure platform reliability, security, and timely delivery across

Qualifications

• 8+ years in DevOps/Platform Engineering with 2+ years in a management role.
• End-to-end ownership of developer/infrastructure platforms; Kubernetes, Helm and ArgoCD.
• 8+ years Linux system administration and VM lifecycle management.
• Experience with GitLab CI/CD and infrastructure as code (Terraform/Ansible).
• Security posture experience: CyberArk/Conjur, RBAC and compliance design.

Responsibilities

• Lead design, deployment and operations of automated, secure platforms with AI capabilities for internal and customer use.
• Build and manage Platform Engineering team, define roadmap and coach engineers.
• Plan and operate OpenTelemetry Observability platform on Kubernetes with Grafana/Mimir/Loki.
• Develop and operate IaC/CI-CD stacks using GitLab CI/CD, Terraform, Ansible, Helm, ArgoCD.
• Own ITSM integrations, security posture, and incident response processes.
• Collaborate across IT and business teams for requirements and delivery validation.

Skills

Kubernetes

Helm

ArgoCD

GitLab CI/CD

Terraform

Ansible

Python

Observability

RBAC

CyberArk

Conjur

Prometheus

Grafana

Mimir

Loki

Zabbix

OpenTelemetry

AI tooling

Tools

Prometheus

Grafana

Loki

Tempo

Mimir

Zabbix

GitLab

Job description

Flexential is hiring a Principal Platform Engineer in the IT organization to plan roadmaps, establish requirements, develop and operationally manage platform technologies including Observability, DevOps, ITSM and Integrations. Current platform initiatives include building a next-gen OpenTelemetry observability platform for 40+ data center facilities and platforms using a LGTM stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir); and enabling secure high-velocity SDLC capability enabling paved pathways, engg excellence measurements and devsecops across multiple development teams.

This role sits at the intersection of engineering management and hands-on technical work. You will lead a small team of platform engineers, create/capture requirements, establish and own technical planning and implementation, and be accountable for platform reliability, security, and delivery timelines. This is a high-visibility, high-impact role — the platforms you build will be foundational to Flexential's IT services, as well as enable AIOps and AI infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities and Essential Job Functions

• Lead the design, development, deployment and operational management of automated, resilient, high availability, self-healing, secure platforms with native-AI capabilities for IT needs, serving both internal as well as customer business capabilities.
• Lead, Build and manage the Platform Engineering team and function — hiring, mentoring, performance management, and technical roadmap ownership.
• Plan, build and operate an OpenTelemetry Observability platform with technologies including Grafana, Mimir, Loki, Tempo, Alertmanager on Kubernetes/RKE2 using Helm and ArgoCD.
• Build an automated federated Observability Edge Stack — Prometheus + OTel collector nodes deployed per site and Zabbix auto-discovery configuration and Prometheus scrape profile library for 10+ device classes (Cisco, Juniper, Dell, NetApp, etc.).
• Design, develop and manage engineering lifecycle platforms for high-velocity secure SDLC using Gitlab and similar / related technologies.
• Build and operate iaC and CI/CD platforms including GitLab CI/CD, Terraform, Ansible AWX, Helm, and ArgoCD for automated provisioning and application deployment.
• Own, enhance and operate critical IT platform technologies e.g Boomi for integrations, AWS for Cloud environments, including their hosted infrastructure.
• Establish and enforce platform security posture: secrets management via CyberArk/Conjur, RBAC, mTLS, compliance boundary design, and zero inbound telemetry architecture.
• Build and integrate ITSM capabilities for various platforms e.g automated incident creation, CI enrichment, and CMDB correlation.
• Define and implement extensibility patterns including AIOps: e.g anomaly detection hooks, event correlation pipeline design, and integration with future ML/AI tooling.
• Partner with other IT and business teams for App Dev, requirements capture, delivery validation and integration needs.
• Represent platform engineering in cross-functional architecture reviews and executive-level program updates.
• Perform other management and technical duties as required and assigned for team and operational resilience e.g team building, on-call rotation, etc.
• Travel maybe required to team or project events.

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant technical experience with 2+ years in a management (or Principal-level) role leading a engineering team.
• DevOps / Platform Engineering - 8+ years, End-to-end ownership of developer/infrastructure platforms; Kubernetes, Helm, ArgoCD, service-mesh, containerized workloads.
• GitOps / CI-CD - 5+ years GitLab CI/CD, pipeline authoring, infrastructure-as-code delivery.
• 8+ years of expert level automation frameworks experience with Python, Terraform, Ansible, etc.
• Infrastructure (Linux/VM) - 8+ years Linux systems administration, VM lifecycle (VMware vCenter/VCF), Netapp storage and compute provisioning.
• Working knowledge of Networking - 3+ years, TCP/IP, BGP/OSPF, SNMP protocol.
• AI tooling – Strong understanding (or 1+ years experience) with MCP, Agentic workflows, SRE workflows e.g AIOps for Anomaly detection, event correlation, alert noise reduction on Prometheus and Grafana stack.
• Experience with Secrets & Security - 4+ years, CyberArk, Conjur, Vault, or equivalent; RBAC design, compliance boundary architecture.
• Engineering Management - 4+ years, Hiring, team building, performance management, roadmap ownership for teams of 5+ engineers.
• Other training and experience may be substituted for the job requirements at the discretion of the manager.

Preferred Skills

• Hands-on experience or working knowledge of Boomi integrations PaaS(iPaaS) technologies.
• Experience with design and development of DR test application/automation and process workflows for corporate BCP execution.
• Hands-on experience working with AWS products in a Well-architected Framework and multi-account model to develop various compute, storage, network iaaS and PaaS services for IT applications.
• Hands-on experience working with BAS / BMS systems in a Datacenter / OT environment.

Base Pay Range

Annualized/Hourly salary range offered for this position is estimated to be $180,000 - $210,000. However, the actual pay range depends on each candidate’s experience, location, and qualifications.

Variable Pay

Discretionary annual bonus, based on personal and company performance.

At Flexential, we value diversity and believe that different perspectives and unique skills make us stronger as a team. While we've outlined the qualities and skills we are looking for in this job posting, we understand that there may be attributes and abilities that aren't explicitly listed but could be a perfect fit for our team. We want to emphasize that you shouldn't hesitate to apply if you don't meet every requirement. We're enthusiastic about assembling a diverse team of individuals who bring various talents to the table. Your unique perspective and abilities may be just what we need to drive innovation and success. If you believe you have what it takes to thrive in our environment, we encourage you to apply.

Benefits of working at Flexential

• Medical, Telehealth, Dental and Vision
• Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• Life and AD&D
• Short Term and Long-Term disability
• Leave of Absence
• Wellness Program
• Rewards and Recognition Program

Benefits are subject to change at the Company's discretion.

Flexential participates in the E-Verify program. Please click here for more information.

EEOC Statement:

Flexential is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.