Staff Engineer - DevOps

hardrockdigital; United States; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid / remote work environment

Competitive compensation

Job summary

Hard Rock Digital is seeking a Staff DevOps Engineer to define the technical direction for our internal developer platform (Backstage) and drive its adoption across teams.

You will own architecture, standards, and AI-enabled workflows, partnering with DevOps, SRE, security, and product engineering to raise velocity while maintaining security and compliance in a global environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or SRE with 3+ years in senior leadership.
• Experience owning architecture and roadmap for internal developer platforms at scale (Backstage preferred).
• Proven track record driving org-wide adoption of self-service workflows and golden paths.
• Expert-level AWS knowledge and cloud-native architectures at scale.
• Deep experience with Kubernetes (EKS), Docker, and Helm; platform-level abstractions.
• IaC expertise with Terraform/Terragrunt and modular design for self-service.
• Strong scripting/automation (Python, Bash, TypeScript) for platform tooling.
• Experience setting CI/CD strategy with GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, TeamCity, etc.
• Strong observability and DevEx metrics focus; translate platform investment into metrics.
• Security hardening and compliance baked into platform defaults.

Responsibilities

• Define technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for our internal developer platform (Backstage).
• Set company-wide standards for golden paths and self-service workflows across infra, CI/CD, and environments.
• Evaluate Backstage plugins and tooling, balancing cost and impact.
• Collaborate with product, SRE, security, and data teams to align platform roadmap with priorities.
• Define and report platform health and DevEx metrics (DORA, lead time, adoption).
• Drive platform adoption across teams, including migration of legacy processes.
• Architect cross-cutting infra and platform capabilities (multi-account AWS, EKS, Terraform).
• Champion security, guardrails, and compliant defaults in a regulated global environment.
• Scale AI-enabled engineering practices and embed AI-assisted workflows into the platform.

Skills

Backstage

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

CI/CD

Automation

AI tooling

Security

Platform leadership

SRE

Education

AWS Certification (Architect/DevOps/SysOps)

Tools

Backstage

Terraform

Kubernetes (EKS)

Docker

Helm

GitHub Actions

ArgoCD

TeamCity

Job description

What are we building?

Hard Rock Digital is a team focused on becoming the best online sportsbook, casino, and social gaming company in the world. We’re building a team that resonates passion for learning, operating, and building new products and technologies for millions of consumers. We care about each customer interaction, experience, behavior, and insight and strive to ensure we’re always acting authentically.

Rooted in the kindred spirits of Hard Rock and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, Hard Rock Digital taps a brand known the world over as the leader in gaming, entertainment, and hospitality. We’re taking that foundation of success and bringing it to the digital space - ready to join us?

What’s the position?

We are looking for a Staff DevOps Engineer to help set the technical direction for our internal developer platform at Hard Rock Digital. This is a senior technical leadership role: you’ll help own the long-term architecture and roadmap for our internal developer platform, built on Backstage, and drive its adoption across every team in our organization.

Where our Senior Platform Engineers build the golden paths and self-service capabilities, you’ll define which capabilities matter most, how the platform should evolve, and how we measure success—turning platform engineering from a set of useful tools into a strategic lever for the whole company’s engineering velocity. You’ll work with DevOps, SRE, security, and product engineering teams to build consensus on standards and drive multi-quarter initiatives.

You’ll also set the bar for what AI-enabled engineering looks like at Hard Rock Digital: fluently using AI coding assistants, agentic tooling, and LLM-powered workflows yourself, and championing their adoption—including embedding AI-assisted workflows directly into the platform (e.g. AI-assisted scaffolding, incident triage, or documentation generation via Backstage) so every engineer benefits.

What will you do?

As a Staff DevOps Engineer, Platform Engineering, you will:

• Contribute to the technical vision, architecture, and roadmap for our internal developer platform (Backstage), including catalog strategy, plugin architecture, and platform APIs.
• Set company-wide standards for golden paths, self-service workflows, and "paved road" patterns spanning infrastructure provisioning, CI/CD, environments, and observability.
• Make build-vs-buy and platform-investment decisions, evaluating Backstage plugins, third-party IDP tooling, and custom development against engineering-wide impact and cost.
• Partner with engineering leadership across product, SRE, security, and data teams to align the platform roadmap with company-wide priorities and identify the highest-leverage investments.
• Define and report on platform health and developer experience (DevEx) metrics—DORA metrics, self-service adoption rates, lead time to production, ticket deflection—and use them to prioritize the roadmap.
• Drive adoption of the platform across teams, including migration strategies for legacy infrastructure and workflows onto self-service, Backstage-based patterns.
• Architect complex, cross-cutting infrastructure and platform capabilities (multi-account AWS, EKS/Kubernetes platform primitives, Terraform/Terragrunt module ecosystems) that other engineers build on top of.
• Champion security, compliance, and guardrail-by-design practices at the platform level, ensuring self-service capabilities are secure and compliant by default across a regulated, global environment.
• Champion and scale AI-enabled engineering practices org-wide—evaluating and rolling out AI coding assistants and agentic tooling, embedding AI-assisted workflows into the platform itself, and helping teams adopt AI-enabled ways of working as a default, not an exception.

What are we looking for?

We’re seeking a seasoned platform engineering leader who has built or scaled an internal developer platform before and understands both the technical depth and the organizational change management required to make self-service actually stick. You should be comfortable operating with significant scope and ambiguity, influencing without direct authority, and translating platform investment into measurable engineering-wide outcomes. Critically, you’re someone who has embraced AI tooling as a genuine force multiplier at both an individual and organizational level—and who can articulate and drive that vision for others.

The ideal candidate will have:

• 8+ years of experience in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or Site Reliability Engineering, with 3+ years in a senior, staff, or equivalent technical leadership capacity.
• Demonstrated experience owning the architecture and roadmap for an internal developer platform at scale—Backstage strongly preferred—including catalog design, plugin ecosystems, and platform extensibility patterns.
• A track record of driving org-wide adoption of self-service workflows and golden paths, including change management across multiple engineering teams.
• Expert-level knowledge of AWS services and cloud-native architectures (multi-account setups, VPC design, IAM policies, networking) at an organizational scale.
• Deep experience with Kubernetes (EKS preferred), Docker, and Helm, including designing platform-level abstractions on top of container orchestration.
• Advanced Infrastructure as Code (IaC) expertise using Terraform/Terragrunt, with experience designing module ecosystems consumed by many teams via self-service.
• Strong scripting and automation skills (Python, Bash, TypeScript/Node.js for Backstage plugin development) and experience architecting extensible platform tooling.
• Experience setting CI/CD strategy and standards across an engineering organization, with tools such as GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, TeamCity, or comparable.
• Strong understanding of observability, DevEx measurement, and how to translate platform investment into metrics leadership cares about (DORA metrics, lead time, adoption rates).
• Deep knowledge of networking, security hardening, and compliance in regulated industries, with experience embedding these as default, automated guardrails at the platform level.
• A track record of mentoring senior engineers and influencing technical direction across multiple teams or the broader organization.
• AWS Professional Certification (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, or SysOps Administrator) strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated fluency with AI development tools (e.g. Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, or similar) and a point of view on how to responsibly scale AI-enabled engineering practices across an organization, including embedding AI-assisted workflows into internal platforms. The ability to operate at, and drive others toward, AI-enabled development velocity is a core expectation of this role, not a nice-to-have.

What’s in it for you?

We offer our employees more than just competitive compensation. Our team benefits include:

• Competitive pay and benefits
• Flexible vacation allowance
• A hybrid / remote working environment
• Startup culture backed by a secure, global brand

Roster of Uniques

We care deeply about every interaction our customers have with us, and trust and empower our staff to own and drive their experience. Our vision for our business and customers is built on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment where regardless of background or beliefs you feel able to be authentic and bring all your talent into play. We want to celebrate you being you (we are an equal opportunity employer).