Senior Platform Engineer

ESPO Corporation; Kansas City (MO); On-site; USD 84,000 - 102,000; Full time

Job summary

ESPO Corporation in Kansas City, MO is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer on a 5+ month contract to lead platform design and developer experience improvements. The role focuses on automation, self-service infra, and scalable deployment patterns across cloud environments.

Responsibilities include owning CI/CD tooling, defining SLO/SLI, and mentoring engineers while driving reliability and observability enhancements. Candidates must be authorized to work in the U.S.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of platform engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, SRE or related fields.
• Deep cloud infra experience in AWS, Azure, or GCP; IaC with Terraform or Pulumi.
• Strong scripting in Bash, Python, PowerShell, Go or similar.
• Expert Git skills including branching, reviews, and releases.
• Networking fundamentals for cloud and hybrid environments.
• Extensive CI/CD design and tooling experience.
• Excellent communication and mentoring abilities.
• Ability to lead in ambiguous projects and drive outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Leads and champions DevOps practices, driving automation for infra and app delivery.
• Architects self-service capabilities, sets patterns and reusable components.
• Partner with engineers to improve developer experience and throughput.
• Scope and lead complex work streams with defined requirements.
• Owns CI/CD toolchains and adoption across the org.
• Defines SLO/SLI frameworks and leads incident response and post-mortems.
• Mentors engineers, conducts reviews, and contributes to hiring.
• Commits to continuous learning and improvement.

Skills

DevOps practices

Infrastructure as Code

Cloud platforms

Scripting languages

Git workflows

CI/CD pipelines

Networking fundamentals

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in technology or related field

Tools

Terraform

Pulumi

Bash

Python

PowerShell

Go

Git

Job description

Senior Platform Engineer
Kansas City, MO
5+ month contract
Pay Rate: $61 - $74hr

Job Description

The Senior Platform Engineer leads the design and delivery of platforms and drives strategic improvements to developer experience across the organization. They own complex automation initiatives, architect self-service capabilities around infrastructure and application delivery, and serve as a primary escalation point and technical mentor for assistant and staff level engineers.

• Leads and champions DevOps practices and culture across the organization, driving automation strategy for infrastructure provisioning and application delivery. Creates processes and conversations to drive improvements related to deployment frequency, failure change rate, mean time to recover (MTTR), and lead time, and sets measurable targets for improvement.
• Partners with architects and writes well-crafted code to provision infrastructure and deploy applications at scale. Establishes patterns, standards, and reusable components that other engineers follow. Documents trade-offs to different approaches and documents architectural decisions.
• Serves as a strategic partner to engineering teams on developer experience. Proactively identifies systemic pain points and process bottlenecks, leads initiatives to resolve them, and builds lasting trust across teams through consistent delivery and deep technical empathy.
• Independently scopes and leads complicated work streams, defining requirements and acceptance criteria in collaboration with stakeholders. Operates effectively in ambiguous environments and guides the team through uncertainty and change.
• Evaluates, selects, and owns the toolchain for developer productivity—particularly CI/CD pipelines—ensuring the software development lifecycle is fast, safe, and reliable. Drives adoption of new tooling and practices across the organization.
• Defines and owns SLO (service level objective) and SLI (service level indicator) frameworks for platform and application health. Leads incident response, conducts blameless post-mortems, and drives systemic improvements to observability and reliability.
• Mentors and coaches engineers at all levels, conducts code and architecture reviews, and contributes to hiring and team development.
• Commitment to continuous learning and improvement.
• All other duties as assigned.
  

Candidates must be legally authorized to work permanently (i.e., without time limitations, without restrictions or without need for work sponsorship) in the country where this position is located.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in technology, business, or related field and 8 years of relevant experience Required or
• Applicable years of experience may be substituted for the degree requirement Required
• Minimum of 8 years of experience in platform engineering, infrastructure, DevOps, SRE, or a closely related technical discipline.
• Deep expertise in building and operating cloud infrastructure in GCP, Azure, or AWS. Mastery of IaC (Infrastructure as Code) tools such as Terraform or Pulumi, including authoring reusable modules and enforcing organizational standards.
• Strong software engineering skills with extensive experience scripting and building tooling in Bash, Python, PowerShell, Go, or similar languages.
• Expert-level proficiency with Git, including branch strategies, code review workflows, and release management practices.
• Strong understanding of TCP/IP networking, DNS, certificate management, and network security principles as applied to cloud and hybrid environments.
• Extensive hands‑on experience designing, building, and operating CI/CD pipelines and the tooling ecosystems around them. Able to evaluate tradeoffs and make architectural recommendations on build and deployment systems.
• Advanced computer skills (e.g., Microsoft Office Suite).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to lead projects and delegate work tasks to team members. Ability to lead the execution of work and resolve issues in a team environment.
• Demonstrated critical thinking skills and ability to work methodically and analytically in a problem‑solving environment.
• Strong attention to detail, facilitation, team building and collaboration.
  

ESPO has a comprehensive benefits package which includes PTO, Group Health and Dental Insurance, and 401k after you have satisfied the necessary waiting periods.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and value the benefits of diversity in our workforce. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity and expression, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, or any other attribute or protected characteristic by law. If you need assistance applying, please get in touch with us directly.