Principal Platform Engineer: SRE & DB Modernization Remote

Lumen Technologies; United States; Remote; USD 152,000 - 223,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

Wellness programs

Job summary

Lumen Technologies is seeking a Principal Engineer to drive the transformation of our database operations into a modern Platform Engineering and SRE model, emphasizing standardization, automation, and reliability.

You will lead automation programs, reduce toil, enhance observability, and collaborate with Operations, Cloud, Security, and Architecture teams to enable cloud migrations and scalable 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.
• Experience leading large-scale engineering, automation, or transformation initiatives in complex enterprise environments.
• Experience driving standardization, process optimization, reliability improvements, and operational efficiency across large-scale platforms.
• Strong experience with Infrastructure-as-Code, 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 transformation of DBA teams toward Platform Engineering and SRE practices.
• Drive adoption of automation-first and reliability-focused operating models.
• Develop engineering standards, operational processes, and best practices that improve consistency and scale.
• Identify and eliminate repetitive manual activities across database operations.
• Analyze incidents, requests, and recurring work patterns to identify automation opportunities.
• Drive reductions in ticket volume, overhead, and technical debt.
• Lead modernization, standardization, and simplification across database platforms.
• Improve provisioning, patching, upgrades, and compliance through automation.
• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance across teams.
• Partner with Operations, Security, Cloud, and Architecture to operationalize transformation initiatives.

Skills

Platform Engineering

SRE

Automation

IaC

CI/CD

Leadership

Stakeholder Mgmt

Education

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

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

AWX

GitOps

Scripting

CI/CD platforms

Job description

Lumen Technologies is seeking a Principal Engineer to drive the transformation of our database operations into a modern Platform Engineering and SRE model, emphasizing standardization, automation, and reliability.

You will lead automation programs, reduce toil, enhance observability, and collaborate with Operations, Cloud, Security, and Architecture teams to enable cloud migrations and scalable data platforms.